Babylon
by Laryna6
Summary: Shinji knows his father, the ruthless industrialist Gendo Ikari, has never felt any love for him. Even so, he never expected to be called back from boarding school only to be informed that he is to be sacrificed to the devil himself in order to bring Gendo's beloved wife back from the dead. In Babylon's successor, everyone is consumed by the lust for something. Victorian Era AU.
1. Chapter 1

_The full title is, of course, Gaslit Revelation Babylon. Because Original Flavor Word Salad._

_So, this is the Victorian Verse I've been rambling on about to anyone willing to lend an ear for awhile. I had a lot of stress that was willing to be burned, so I did it for NaNo. __It references a lot of literary tropes of the time and later about the time, but the sheer fact that certain genres apply to this fic is something of a spoiler (for those who can't figure it out knowing Eva), so just think Gothic horror and the period's rise in cults (see Crowley, etc.) and so on. _

_The thing is that it's not really right to write something about the Victorian Era without the Victorian Era being present, so the following should be a thing:_

Warning: Victorians_._

_They were really, really, incredibly nasty people. If you ever need to have your faith in humanity utterly destroyed, studying a non-sanitized history of what the Victorians got up to will do it. __We think of it as a genteel era, etc.: no. No. They were just really effing vile._

_This is an M-rated fic because it's set in the Victorian era, and these people were incredibly perverted, really sadistic, and enshrined the idea that you could do anything you wanted to anyone who was in your power, and that was your right, and they were bad if they protested things like, eg. being raped._

_It says something that in a fic with a human-sacrificing Satanic cult with orgies, the stuff most likely to push it over the line into NC-17 comes not from the demons, but from the_ _Victorians_ _being _Victorians_._

_So I want to establish right here that the opinions in the fic are not the opinions of the author, and when something comes up that you really, really hope the author is kidding about, odds are I'm not, and people really used to think that way. Those things really happened, eg. institutionalized rape of younger students by older students, prison bitches at schools. This is where we get the word 'faggot.' It doesn't mean 'gay person.' It means 'probably straight (given how much of the population is straight) underage male rape victim.'_

_Now that the warnings are out of the way, despite the time period, there somehow manages to be a loving relationship where both people involved respect each other in the fic. Eventually. There's also references to sex taking place (I may release a slightly more explicit version elsewhere, but it's really hard to have a fic with_ Victorians _in it and keep within the M rating_),_ but this is the Victorian Era, when the only kind of sex that was okay was rape (one of those things you probably wish I was kidding about), so while if you asked the person involved he'd say it's perfectly normal, by modern standards a lot of what's referred to in here is dubcon, and it certainly is dubcon. There can be a significant difference between 'better than average' and 'not actually evil' - think about this when Iruel comes up in the context of those factory workers. When the reality is horrible enough that something like _that _is a major improvement..._

* * *

Shinji shivered, bracing himself for the caning. "You know the rules, _Ikari_," the older boy spat.

He couldn't run away, not with two more older boys grabbing his arms. They'd beat him harder if he tried. The protest caught in his throat: he hadn't meant to be late to class again, but saying that he'd missed breakfast as well, trying to get the soap out of at least one uniform wouldn't help. He knew all too well that if he protested their 'justice,' that was almost as bad as daring to fight, a girly little thing like him.

At least all the marks kept his face from being pretty, he told himself, shutting his eyes tight, feeling the harsh itching of the lye soap still left in the fabric.

If only Kensuke was here, Kensuke would have tried something, but Kensuke was gone. That was why the other boys in the dorm had done this, because Kensuke was well-liked. Kensuke had promised to take them out to his country home to go hunting.

Kensuke's father was in debtor's prison now, and Kensuke had been removed from the school, even though it wasn't proper procedure at all, and everyone knew whose father had pulled the strings.

The little rich boy, jealous of Kensuke's popularity: he must have written home and told his father to ruin him. That was what everyone knew and Shinji protesting that he'd never written that man in all the years he'd been here hadn't helped.

Before, the upperclassmen had looked at him predatorily: he would be almost as good as a real girl, so whoever got him as their little fag would be lucky. He'd only made it this far through the year because three of them had applied to the headmaster to be his mentor, all of them students in good standing and in good families.

The fact that Shinji didn't get any allowance or gifts from home to take hadn't daunted them: he'd heard them laughing and saying they'd convince him to fix that right quick. Once one of them had officially taken him in hand, it would be his word against theirs, and no one would listen to an underclassman who needed to learn proper discipline.

Especially not one who had needed so _much _discipline in the last month.

Those three were some of the only boys in the school not afraid of antagonizing his father now. There was a small, select group of upperclassmen, all of whom had a tendency to greet Shinji with that same smile, as if they knew something they didn't, or they had orders from their families about him that they were looking forward to. Were their families that much better than Kensuke's? Or had any of them heard and believed Shinji saying that this wasn't for him, his father didn't care what happened to him, and actually believed him. In which case he was a girly boy with absolutely no one who had any desire to protect him, not in the entire school.

He couldn't help crying out when they struck him. At least they sounded more pleased than mocking when they laughed at him.

* * *

He was back in class, welts and soap rash stinging equally, when he was summoned to the headmaster's office. He would be leaving the school. His father's manservant had come to collect him. His belongings would be sent after him on the train.

It would have felt like a relief, if he hadn't known his father.

The one blessed relief was that there would be an overnight stop. A bath. Maybe he could even get clean clothes, or ask Kozo to wash these for him. Even though Gendo didn't approve of a mere boy asking anything of a superior servant, Kozo was sometimes distantly kind, in the same way as Rei.

He hoped Rei was still there.

* * *

Rei was still there, alright, standing with her hands folded primly at the foot of the stairs, face blank as always.

His father was standing up on the balcony, over the statue of the tree with its grasping branches that seemed to reach up to him, imploring pity that did not exist. His face was hidden in the shadows. Shinji hadn't seen him there for a moment. Someone must have spotted the carriage coming up the drive – Rei?

His father was here to welcome him? His father wouldn't possibly stand around just to welcome him. Shinji had expected to at least get to his rooms, have a few moments to clean up a bit, even though his father would either glare or ignore him no matter what he did. At least making sure he was presentable would have made things go a little less badly. Hopefully.

He didn't dare look to Rei for help, or back at Kozo, who was closing the great door. He should have expected that something was up when _he _was brought to the front door. Shinji swallowed. "Father?" he asked timidly. His voice echoed a bit in the room with its hard stone walls and floor, and otherwise he might have hoped that his quiet, fearful words might not have reached him.

"It's time," his father said, looking down at him. On him. "For you to fulfill the purpose for which I raised you. Ten years ago, I lost my wife. Your mother. You're going to get her back for me." Gendo's voice echoed too, in the dark room, deeper and much louder than Shinji's pathetic attempt at a greeting.

Shinji didn't dare say anything like 'What?!' He was too scared even to squeak. Not when the wounds from his last beating still smarted, even if Kozo was kind enough to pick up ointment for him at a chemist's, and his father was never reluctant to have Shinji caned. What he'd do if Shinji dared imply that he had gone mad, it didn't bear thinking about.

"Tonight, we'll be driving to a place outside London where they hold Black Masses. I promised your soul to the devil two years after she died, and you're finally old enough for him to collect his payment and your sainted," was there just a little emphasis on that, "mother to return to us." Did those terrifying eyes narrow in the darkness. "Don't stand there like a fish. Do you understand what you are to do?"

"Father, but… is that even possible?" he asked, lowering his eyes, unable to look at Gendo, the tree reminding him of the trees where witches were hung. They'd learned that in class. They were rarely burnt. Peasants couldn't afford to waste the wood, just like the poor often didn't have enough coal to stay warm. Just like the students didn't, because coal was expensive and they weren't worth it, just like his life was worth nothing to his father. Shinji might have made a joke, if he had Kensuke's courage. Something like 'at least it would be warm in hell,' but the words died on his lips.

"It is," Gendo said in tones that brooked no argument. "Fuyutsuki, make him presentable. Get rid of those cuts and bruises on his face. Shinji, for once in your life, you will be presentable and not disgrace me, is that understood? If your mother remains dead because of you, boy, _your life will not be worth living_."

"But, but what if she doesn't come back?" Shinji almost pled. What if this was a hoax, which it had to be, and he took the blame for the failure. He found himself taking a step back, out of fear of his father's expression. It wasn't rage, it was absolute coldness, utter distaste for Shinji's existence.

"All you have to do," Gendo said slowly, almost spitting, "is sell your soul in exchange for hers. It should be simple enough for even a disrespectful little fool like you. If you prove incapable, then I will cut you open then and there and use your guts for an augury of what else the devil might accept. I _will _have your mother back, do you understand me, boy? You'll be able to see her again too," Gendo added grudgingly. "She always spoiled you. I suppose she'll be grateful to you, even though I'm the one who's arranged all of this."

"My, my mother?" Shinji remembered soft hands and a warm voice, but this was all happening so fast! His father had to be kidding, or that was what Shinji would have thought if this wasn't his father.

"Haven't you listened to a word I said?" You disrespectful brat. "Go to your rooms. Fuyutsuki will get you ready, and the four of us will leave this afternoon."

"The four of us?"

"I was created to serve as a replacement body for Lady Ikari," Rei answered Shinji. She was the only one who ever would.

"What?!" Shinji squawked now, even as he shook with fear. "Father, you can't be serious!" He took a step forward now, a distant part of him amazed at his own daring as he looked up at the balcony. "You can't!" he begged, reaching out to Gendo imploringly, even knowing that like that twisted, dead tree, he couldn't reach him. Rei was just a servant, but 'she's my friend!' he wanted to say, but his father wouldn't care, he just wouldn't care!

Even, even being cut open might be better than going back to school, it would all be over, right? And maybe his father wouldn't get away with it. Maybe there would be questions, although Shinji knew that wouldn't happen. It would be hushed up. His father had too much money, and power. The _police _wouldn't dare.

But, but Rei! "Let me go!" he pleaded with Fuyutsuki.

"Hurry up and use the drug," his father ordered. "You don't have all day to get him ready, and I won't wait another month because of a childish tantrum." That voice pressed into him, echoed in his head, the contempt making him curl up and die a little inside as Fuyutsuki's pitiless hand clamped over his mouth, as Shinji's vision grew blurred and the hand that had reached out to his father (even though he knew better, oh how he did) fell in utter defeat.

* * *

Smoke swirled around them, churchly incense without a trace of tobacco or opium smoke. The Master disliked them, and there were other pleasures available to the circle, but he was here for far more than mere earthly delights.

"And why should I bring her back for you?" Behind a stern expression, a mask of iron, he remembered those words, several years ago now. "What do you have to offer me? Your soul? Don't make me laugh. Why should I bring back a soul already in my possession, in exchange for another soul already in my possession?"

"I haven't sold it yet," he'd said through gritted teeth, his fists clenched as he stood in the pentagram before the throne of the devil that looked like a youth.

"But you've already damned yourself… how many times over now? How many workers, dead in your factories before the bargain with Iruel was made? How many rivals eliminated for the sake of your greed and desire for power? Even if it was the sorceress you married who made those bargains, you knew of them. You cannot lie to me. Your soul is mine."

"God can redeem anyone," was his reply, glaring now at those laughing red eyes.

"Oh? Is that what you really believe? But the redeemer is not your God, now is he? Your God is Yui. In order to be redeemed, you would have to open your heart to God, and we both know there's no room in there for anyone except her." A warm chuckle then, as it rested its chin on a delicate hand, looking at him with disdain. "Even if you had a prayer of escaping eternal torment, I wouldn't give tuppence for a soul like yours."

"Then what would you accept?"

"Your Radiance, I apologize for his disrespect. Allow me to have him removed," he'd heard from behind him. So Lorenz Keel was here, draped in one of those robes. Here to gloat that his traitorous daughter was dead. "A dead witch's puppet has no right to stand in your presence."

The devil raised that death-pale hand. "He's no puppet, not anymore. The spell she used to enslave him vanished with her death, as all such things do. He's here of his own will. He genuinely came to love the witch that used her power to bind him to his bed and force him to drink the love potion she made with his own mother's blood, spilled on one of the altars… And when you found that out was when the seed of love sprouted in your heart, even in soil poisoned by hatred of all mankind, even, no, because she was a monster like yourself, incapable of loving you as you were anyone but her. Since you despise humanity, and she was far less human than any demon in my court. How… special." That smile might have seemed approving, if not for the mocking edge. "Love. Isn't it supposed to be the one power that can rescue a soul from hell? If someone who truly loved the witch Yui – not you, someone with a worthy soul – comes to stand before me and freely offers themselves up for her return, then I might just accept."

They'd both known who Gendo was meant to think of. Professor Fuyutsuki, a researcher in dark and arcane tomes, who had been enslaved by Yui well before she met Gendo, even if she'd used subtler means. A bit of manipulation, a bit of the charm she'd gained by her own compacts with the devil.

She'd never allowed the Professor to make his own pact with the devil, even though that would have given her two sorcerers under her power. The devil's blessing might have included freeing him from her spell: it had happened before, once when Gendo was here as Yui's familiar slave. The young witch suddenly granted freedom and power had triumphed over the 'loving husband' that had drugged and enslaved her. Unfortunately, for her, the leaders of the cult were so afraid of the idea of a woman triumphing, when they'd surrounded themselves with enslaved young ladies, that they'd intervened.

Keel, no doubt thinking of his own daughter, had stood over her with his staff and pronounced that this was a 'sentence,' for raising a hand against her husband, her owner, when it was not this Kyoko's place to do so (a mere German wench he'd picked up on the Continent when he went looking for someone with a bright mind and some money that he could use to handle the magic and the finances for him while he debauched himself – Gendo would like to believe that he hadn't met those criteria himself, in Yui's eyes).

The devil had cleared its throat, and said that he had granted the woman her freedom, and was Keel claiming that he had the right to declare null and void a bargain made by his own infernal Master?

He had bowed his head, backed down, but while the woman had bargained for her freedom, she'd failed to ask for her tormentor's death. He'd found another, English this time, very, very quickly, and everyone knew it was just a matter of time before the two of them fought again.

Even though his father was a member of the circle and he'd been ordered not to defy their Master, he wouldn't let it go, and even though she was just one witch against the circle, hatred had to burn in her heart. Rendered barren by the magic that enslaved her so there wouldn't be any inconvenient bastards, she'd bargained with Armisael for a child of power.

That Gendo's case had turned out so differently, that even freed he longed for his Mistress to return and enslave him again must interest the cult enough that the rest of them had eventually overruled Keel, who most certainly did not want his daughter to return. It had taken him two years to gain this audience with the devil, two years and all the bribery and blackmail the alchemists he'd enslaved and that too-suave reporter could manage for him, and was it granted only so that the creature could mock him?

Because this was clearly another trap. The word 'freely' proved it. Even though Yui lost control of their teacher when she died, Gendo was ready and waiting to retake that control, and it had been necessary. If the old man had any power to fight him off, any at all, he would have used that sacrificial knife before Gendo could force him to kneel and submit. He'd plucked it from feeble old fingers as despairing eyes peered up at him and smiled: this was the man who had dared look down on Gendo as new money, merely Yui's pet, a stray she'd picked up and lower than the mud Kozo's manservant brushed off his boots.

It had amused Yui to make the 'dear professor' Gendo's manservant, once they married, although she kept the professor busy in his laboratory most of the time and had ordered Gendo never to enquire into what was done there.

Although he'd recently been very pleased by one of the products…

Who knew what Fuyutsuki could ask for, when his mind was restored to him? Nothing that Gendo would want. Yui had many other admirers: she'd made full use of all her powers, but did any among them love her?

Someone else, who loved Yui even without the witch's magic?

After it occurred to him, it was obvious. He'd watched her with the boy, after all. How it amused her, how easy it was to make him adore her, see her as his goddess, the sun at the center of his universe.

Gendo had hated him for it, and his jealousy amused Yui, he knew. She'd told him that she was merely raising the boy as a slave (just like Gendo), so, when the time came that he was old enough to stand before the devil and sell his soul, he would wish only to please and serve her.

Raised to have no will of his own, he would never think to rebel against her, the way Yui had sought power superior to her father's. Lorenz Keel might be first among the Circle, but he was only the second to bargain with the devil, after they'd released it from its frozen prison.

Despite the deference his spawn showed him, Tabris had never claimed to be Lucifer himself. He hadn't declined Lucifer's titles, either, and Tabris was a lesser angel, the domain only of dusty old scholars like the ill-fated defrocked Father Katsuragi. It was clearly a pseudonym, or merely one of his names, given that fallen angels of far higher rank hailed him as their lord and master.

Yet where there was one, there might be more… even if not in Antarctica.

Normal children loved their mothers. "You want the boy?" he asked.

"His mother and grandsire both possess considerable power, and both of them bred themselves carefully. There's power in his blood, and also darkness. The witch bore him as a sacrifice: have him brought to me on the summer solstice of his fourteenth year, as well as a suitable vessel for Yui's soul."

Did he know of the homonculous that Professor Fuyutsuki's researches had finally produced? No, Gendo told himself. Their home was well-warded. Yui's wards might have failed with her death, but even if it was difficult to gain an audience with the devil himself, who only appeared before an assembled Circle, the others were more willing to deal with a lone warlock. He'd offered up seven children to Sahaquiel, one to blind each of the seven eyes.

The others might have more trouble acquiring children now, but Gendo's factories kept him well-supplied. The parents would bring them to him themselves, with their minds ensorcelled. Thankfully he was the one to make the bargain with Iruel, with Yui's assistance. They would labor in the factory until they died.

Gendo nodded his acceptance of the devil's terms.

"Then, provided the conditions are met, we have a bargain, Sir Gendo," the devil said, and gestured forward the cupbearer.

Gendo had never been permitted to take Unholy Communion before, not as a mere ensorcelled familiar. This would mark him as a member of the circle, if the outer circle. Killing him before he could bring Shinji here would be interference in their master's affairs, and anyone who tried to annul another's bargain risked the loss of Tabris' favor.

His title was only a few years old now; Yui's doing, although before now the Circle had referred to him as 'Ikari' or Mister Ikari at best, knowing that he only had the title because he was Yui's lapdog and she had helped him make his fortune, not on merit or blood, like most of them. Now that Tabris had used it, however?

Bowing over the cup and its bearer at their Master, he reached down to take it with a feeling of satisfaction. He just had to ensure that Shinji had nothing but Yui to love, not even his own soul. That was simple enough.

The darkness in the boy's veins: if he'd inherited his parents' near-heartlessness, then no one else without similar charm would be able to break past that innate selfishness. If anyone showed any signs of trying, it would be easy for Gendo to deal with them.

And what was a little matter of… ten years, maybe as little as eight? How old was the damn thing, again? Well, no matter. He would advance Yui's plans in her absence, and once she achieved her ascendance, he would have the rest of eternity to spend kneeling at the feet of his Mistress.


	2. Chapter 2

_I'm glad that so many people have expressed interest in the 'verse! It's a bunny I've had for quite awhile, but I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do it justice since descriptions and surroundings are my weak point as a writer, and I really wanted the fic to have the proper atmosphere, to convey the decadence of the setting. _

_Yet this was a long story with a plot in my head, not a oneshot I could ask for as a birthday giftfic or something, so, well, if you want something written, often you have to do it yourself. I'd like to give thanks to Literary Eagle (author of _The Happy Red Planet, _go read it__) and Isadorator (I'll have to find out what username they want to be credited under) for reading it over for me and doing things like suggesting ways for scenes to have more impact or letting me know that the word 'sexy' isn't period. I really want this fic to succeed at doing what I want it to do, so I really do appreciate all feedback, especially what worked for you and what didn't._

* * *

Shinji knew that he must have been bathed, washed, oiled and perfumed from what his father had ordered and the way he found himself when he woke up, but only flashes remained of warmth, touch, silk on his skin and bare feet, wrapped in a cloth and bundled into the carriage. Even though his mind was in no state to understand instructions, invisible strings came from the collar around his neck that lifted his legs, opened his mouth obediently.

Carried out of the carriage again, into another building, ordered to walk. Kneel. Hard stone under his knees. Marble. Stay. Rei, she was next to him, and that was alright, everything was alright. He would have giggled if the collar didn't keep him silent. He felt so _nice_. Nothing hurt.

Stand. Forward. Kneel before a white blur. Closer. Something warm touching his cheek. He might have pushed against it if he couldn't move. Collar: maybe he was a cat? (He didn't want to be killed for meat and fur: no one would want something like him for a pet, he'd be a wretched stray, starving on the streets, the way he might if he displeased his father. Or sent to work at a factory again for a day, the way he had last break, when his father wanted him to understand how grateful he should be and how weak he was.

The collar slid from around his neck, and he almost wanted it back, because now he didn't know what to do with himself and he still couldn't think. Warm thing (a pale hand) on the top of his head, and clarity poured through him.

Terrified blue eyes met red. A boy that looked maybe a year older than him. An albino? Skin and hair of such a shocking pure white, he wanted to compare it to marble, and alabaster. Something beautiful out of songs. He was much, much prettier than Shinji ever was, even if he wasn't quite like a girl.

So he was an albino, and the cult his father joined (had missing Shinji's mother finally driven him mad, there were always rumors, burning all of her possessions in the courtyard) thought he was magic because of it, maybe?

"I can give you power over your father," was what the boy said.

He had to be joking.

"The only bargain your father has ever made with me was to bring me you. That bargain has been kept. His enemies have been waiting for this chance for quite a few years now. If you don't bring back the witch Yui, if her protections aren't added to his own, then you might see him laid out upon that altar before the end of the night."

Shinji half-turned his head. Rei. Rei was on there, no one else had hair like hers.

She was, was naked. So were a lot of the people around the edges of the room, kneeling at the feet or sitting on the laps of some of the people in cloaks.

Shinji was naked too. He blushed furiously and the boy laughed, not unkindly. "In exchange for your soul," he said, and Shinji's blood went even colder, "I'll give you the power to kill him. To return to him every bit of pain he's ever inflicted on you, before he dies. You'll need that power, Shinji: your mother's father is here, and he's already made his own bargain with me. The loss of your mother set him back, and the youth I granted him won't last forever. He'll need another body soon, a body of his own blood, and a body that can inherit his property will be easiest. If you don't shed your father's blood, he will, and use it to create a binding that will make your will nothing but an extension of his. You'll perform the ritual to let his soul take your body and rejoice."

He wanted to run, he wanted to run so, so much, but his knees were weak: if there wasn't space between them, he was sure they would have knocked together. Then he realized he'd be less exposed if they were pressed together and did it, choking back a mortified sound. That was a little better, even if the boy in front of him could still see his… thing. It wasn't much of one, and this was another boy, so he wouldn't care… except he was talking about Shinji's soul, and looking at Shinji's body with more than a little amused appreciation. "Don't blush, young man. It's nothing that everyone here hasn't seen before. A virgin?" Shinji could only blush. "That will only make your body a more valuable prize," the young man warned him now, looking serious. "If you don't sell me your soul, then before you leave here tonight, someone else will take it. The power to avenge yourself, I think. Protection until your majority… what do you wish for? Aside from vengeance on your father. And safety."

"Rei. Rei's safety." He didn't have anyone else. She'd gone along with this, so calm when it was Shinji's soul and her body, but… His mother. "Can you really bring back my mother?" he asked quietly.

"Her soul is mine: I can dispose of it as I wish." Somehow, looking at him, Shinji believed him. Perhaps because the way he said it was so offhand: that frown doubtful that Shinji was really asking this instead of doubtful of his own ability.

"Without, without hurting Rei," Shinji tried. His lips were dry: he had to wet them with his tongue. He was shaking.

"There are plenty of other bodies here, but are you sure? Once she's back…"

"My father won't have any more use for me," Shinji knew. That was the reason he'd been called back. He wouldn't get to stay with her. He'd have to go back to school. "Can you use my body?"

"Body and soul for body and soul: that was the bargain offered. Reshaping bodies is child's play, but it's not worth it," but that wasn't a no.

"I'm not worth it," Shinji said in a small voice. "I, she, my mother… She was kind to me," so maybe she'd be kind to Rei? Maybe she'd be sad that Shinji was gone? "She deserves to live a lot more than I do." She'd be happier. His father loved her. And maybe he might, he might even be grateful to Shinji? That Shinji had turned down murdering him, too. He bowed his head quickly, the movement almost a jerk, realizing that he was asking someone for a favor. "Do you, do you really grant wishes?" he asked shyly, looking up through his eyelashes.

"A human offers me their soul, and I make a bargain with them in exchange. Genies are servants, I am master here."

"I didn't mean to imply that you weren't," Shinji said, cringing as he realized he may have misspoken.

"It's alright." The other boy reached out to cup Shinji's face, then scratched his scalp a bit, just gently. Was this why dogs liked being scratched?

"Please?" he asked shyly. "If you really can bring her back, I'll do anything you want." No one had touched him this gently since his mother. If he could bring her back? If he could be loved again, it would be worth anything.

Even though in this case 'anything' meant eternal hellfire. Torture.

A laugh, a kind one. Now that it had hit Shinji what this really meant, the kindness was scarier than a mocking laugh could have been. No one who would hurt someone until the end of time could possibly be so kind. It was a trick, a ruse. Meant to lure him in. "I'll own you, body and soul," the voice (the demon? The devil himself? All that white, he had to be a fallen angel) reminded him. "It's not a matter of doing _something _for me. You'll do whatever I wish. Your body, and mind, will be mine, and I'll do whatever I wish with them. Are you sure that you don't want power?"

"You'll get my soul in the end, right?" Shinji knew, and the devil laughed.

"There are many ways of putting it off," but Shinji was absolutely correct, that smile said.

"Where is my mother?" Shinji asked. "She isn't in heaven?"

"No."

"Right," Shinji knew, his shoulders slumping a bit. "You wouldn't be able to bring her back if she was in heaven." The devil had no power there. Unless he was going to bring back a fake, but wouldn't that serve his father right? Lose his real son, and get taken advantage of for the rest of his life by a demoness. "My father's definitely going to hell," he knew. "I don't want them to end up in the same place. If my mother comes back, will she have another chance?"

"Hmm… for you, I'll release her soul, and grant her another chance. In exchange for you." So not just as a favor, even though Shinji didn't think he would have gotten it otherwise.

He felt more than a little giddy, caught up in delirium. What happened to Kensuke, the shock of coming home and now this. Was this what it was like to be drunk? "And no matter whether or not it works, don't let my father cut me open?"

"I'll promise you that."

"Ever," Shinji pressed him. "Not even a demon that looks like my father." After Shinji went to hell.

"Don't worry," the demon promised him. "My subjects have better things to do with their time."

Better had to mean nastier, but "Alright," Shinji said, then realized he should probably specify. They'd draw up a contract, right? "My mother back, in exchange for all of me. My soul and my body too. But she has to be healthy. And sane." Had they tortured her into insanity? Was his gentle mother screaming, right now? He couldn't even remember her face.

He was leaning forward now, looking up at the demon hopefully, and he looked so kind. It was definitely a trick, the warmth radiating from white velvet had to be hellfire, a warning of the demon's true nature, like those red eyes, but if he really was a demon, then he really could do this. School, his father: common sense was 'better the devil you know,' but he just, he just didn't want it to be his father that… and Rei would live, and… "Rei," he added. "She doesn't get taken over, or sacrificed or anything."

"Not to me," the fallen angel promised. "By giving me your body and soul now, you're forfeiting all the remaining years of your life, years you normally would have had to try to amend your contract. I'll give you a little leeway to adjust things even after the binding. Your father isn't the only one who brought me an offering tonight."

So he was being rude and holding up the line… of human sacrifices? But the devil had leaned over and gestured for someone to put a silver goblet in his hand. He held it out to Shinji.

Blood.

"It's mine," the devil told him, seeing his expression. "Drink my blood, and you will gain a fragment of my power. Since most contracts are for power, it also serves to seal the contract."

_I'm going to hell,_ Shinji knew. _But if I don't, Rei's going to die._

He took it with trembling hands. Blood spilled over the brim: he winced when it hit white velvet. "S-Sorry."

A wave of the devil's hand: it was nothing. And it wasn't. The blood vanished. "Don't apologize for having much more sense than most who offer me their souls."

His smile was serene and Shinji couldn't help returning it, even though his was a little more pinched, strained. He wondered if he was still blushing or if his face was pale and nervous. Was the pain in his stomach stress or hunger: was this one of those things you fasted for, or was gluttony a sin?

He touched his lips to the rim of the goblet and hesitated. Not that he was thinking of only pretending to drink, and the idea of trying to chug was too ridiculous to entertain for more than a second – he had no idea how to chug, he hadn't been welcome in the circles of boys egging each other on to practice with water. So he just drank.

Warmth, spreading outward from his throat. When it hit his brain everything started to tingle. His bones felt weird. He blinked his eyes rapidly, watching the colors shift. Was this death? "_Mom?" _he tried to think loudly. Was her soul moving into his body, or was his getting pulled out of it first?

First one hand, then the other, was carefully removed from the stem of the silver goblet. It was taken away, and he let himself fall forward, leaning against those legs. He was either going to die or be tortured eternally or both, so he really couldn't be in any worse trouble if he was impertinent just because he was tired.

His hair was being stroked, by a hand just a little warmer than Shinji thought hands should be. It was nice. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to be a cat, he thought as he was gently turned around, as his unfocused eyes saw a dark mass arise out of the center of a pentagram, taking shape in an instant.

_Mother,_ he knew, somehow, with absolute certainty, and knowing it was done he let his eyes slip closed, let go of himself and fell into the grasp of those hands.


	3. Chapter 3

_What kind of Satanic cult doesn't have orgies? Heh. _

_Going into period attitudes re. sex. _

_They were very, very disturbing, and Shinji's viewing everything through that lens. People looking at what's going on around them solely through the lens of what they think is going on/how they think the world works is a theme in the fic. A lot of people are very, very wrong about the situation they're in because of this human tendency..._

* * *

It was _warm_. It barely ever was in the dorms of the boys his age: it built character and allowed the school to save money on coal. He pitied the boys who were lucky enough to grow up in India and unlucky enough to be sent here by parents who believed it was healthier for them. Between the cold and the sparse meals, well, Kensuke wasn't the first student who had left because of something horrible, it was just that most of them left in caskets.

Curling up, Shinji realized that there was someone else in the bed. Kensuke. No one else was going to risk getting caught sharing warmth with him, not when the teachers would punish you for it and the older boys who did the patrols (since the teachers weren't going to come in here: it was cold and they had old bones!) didn't like anyone they suspected of poaching.

He nudged at him a bit: what time was it? Was Kensuke going to get caught?

When a hand touched his forehead and he heard a voice that wasn't Kensuke's hum softly he started, jerking up in bed, his head… something on his head brushing against the other person's wrist as he sat up.

Shinji reached up and felt around. Wait, and, um, what?!

"You kept thinking of being a cat," he heard, and twisted around to see the pale demon from… that wasn't a dream?!

And these were "Cat, cat ears?" he squeaked embarrassingly, then even more embarrassed when his gaze moved down the demon's chest and saw white fabric pooled around his hips, sliding further down because Shinji's movements were dragging the cloth and it had slid down off his own hips.

He let go of his ears almost convulsively to grab the cloth to cover himself. It was one thing to be naked in front of another boy, but having someone watch while, while his body was having one of those reactions. Was it just because he was waking up and it was warm and there'd been someone's naked (naked!) skin pressed up against his, arms wrapped around him, or was it because of that lean body and Shinji's face must be completely red.

His brain belatedly informed him that he had a tail, and it was standing on end, before with a twitch he pulled it around his waist, trying to be small, feel less exposed. A, a tail. He could feel it, and feel with it, feel his ears twitching.

This was, this was real magic.

"Cream?" the demon asked him. "You don't have to eat a cat's diet, but you didn't look like you'd had very much of anything to eat before you came. They can bring fresh scones right now, with cream, jam and honey, but there's fish already cooking."

"Um…" this, this felt like the real world. Shinji thought he felt alive, but it wasn't hurting anywhere.

The demon leaned forward, up off the brocaded pillows he must have been reclining on while he held Shinji, and Shinji's eyes went to the silk, which slid even further down with the movement, as the demon picked up a small silver bell and rang it.

"Yes, Master?" a cheerful voice said, a girl who looked around Rei's age (not that Shinji had seen many girls) asked.

"My newest pet has woken up. Please bring scones, and juice, and ask if Mari is willing to spare one or two of her fish for a new little kitten, hmm?"

She laughed brightly. "Is he going to stay a kitten, Master?" she asked, ears perking up.

"He's just woken up, Hikari," was the gently chiding response, as the demon put a hand on Shinji's back, stroking it in a way that was maybe meant to be soothing, but but _skin_ and they were naked and the hand was warm, not freezing from the cold water of the baths after Sports. Shinji wasn't used to being touched. "Let's get something into him first, yes?"

"Oh!" she realized, and looked at Shinji apologetically, "I'll be back with the tray in just a minute" she said, and bowed quickly to the demon before she left.

"Hikari is in charge of keeping everyone fed," the demon explained now, turning to him. "Her younger sisters couldn't even remember a time when they weren't hungry." The contempt in his voice frightened Shinji. Even more so the way his smile became gentle again, as he reached up to play with one of Shinji's ears, tugging a little so Shinji turned back to him as he sat up more properly, drawing his knees under himself to echo Shinji, who had found himself kneeling not to show deference but because that pulled his legs under him and felt like more of him was hidden, even if turning his body towards the front of the bed meant he had to hurry and grab the sheet. He tried not to look down, not at either of them. "You don't have to stay a cat," he told him. "Hikari likes being a light sleeper, so she can wake up whenever anyone needs anything, and Mari likes it so much she spends most of her time turned entirely into a cat, even now that she's left my household for a new Mistress."

"A, a Mistress?" Shinji asked. He couldn't mean that Mari had a kept woman, not when he'd called this Mari a 'she,' but this was a demon, and perversion, and he would have clenched his hands together tight if they weren't folded in his lap, trying to hide himself as the demon shifted a little closer.

"Mari decided to become a familiar," the demon explained, rubbing the nape of Shinji's neck now. "She took a liking to this one little witch and asked if she could have her all to herself. I don't think Asuka's quite realized yet just who I was giving as a present to whom, but showing my favor there resolved a few difficulties." A moment's smirk at the thought of that.

The door opened again, and Hikari came in, along with a young man a little taller and much stronger-looking than Shinji carrying a portable table. He had to put it down carefully next to the bed so Hikari could put the tray down on it. When he removed his hands from under the table, Shinji's eyes widened to see that they were clawed, but it was only when he and Hikari both bowed to the demon that he saw the black wings furled on the other boy's back.

Hikari was wearing an apron that didn't look like anything he'd ever seen, but it was pretty cute. It matched her slit yellow eyes. The demon boy was naked. "Now that Mari's left us, Touji is in charge of the incubi," the demon lord introduced him.

Touji nodded a casual hello, grin showing fangs.

"You don't have to wear the wings and claws to be an incubus, Touji just likes to look that way," Hikari said helpfully. "Since you're going to be a household pet for now, just let me know if you want anything? I'd be happy to give you the orientation later, when our Master is done with you for awhile." She looked past Shinji at the demon. "Should I go over the typical questions now, Master, or do you…"

The demon smiled. "Let him be fed first, Hikari."

Two bows, and "We'll get going then," Touji said. At the demon's nod of dismissal, they headed to the door, although Touji gave Shinji a 'cheer up, man' wave from the door.

"This isn't hell?" Shinji asked when the door closed.

"Of course not." The demon assured him, ruffling his hair. "Hell's a very dreary place. They don't have orange juice, music, or much of anything. I spend all my time in the human world, and you sold your soul and body to _me_." He leaned forward past Shinji now, and started cutting open a scone. "My true name is a power to conjure by, so I call myself Tabris. Your ties to your birth family are severed: your name is Shinji now, not Shinji Ikari, although you can change it later, if you like. Touji's younger sister keeps changing hers: I think it's Cherry at the moment, unless that was only because she was pleading with me to conjure up cherries for her."

Shinji blinked, startled to find a piece of scone spread with Devonshire cream already held to his lips. There was just so much to take in. The devil nudged his lips coaxingly, and Shinji realized that he needed to be obedient. Taking it in, chewing and swallowing earned him a benevolent smile.

The scone was still warm, the cream was fresh: it was so much better than anything he'd had in years, at the school, but he barely noticed that, not with everything that was going on.

"I have the power to shape men's bodies to my will, and I've given that to some of the sorcerers who have made contracts with me, and also some of my servants. You're an adorable human boy with cat ears because you took the form of a scruffy little kitten when I peered into your dreams last night." Another bite? That earned him another smile: good pet.

Tabris turned back to the table and opened a jar to slather another piece with peach jam. "Mari is the only demon in the house right now: she came with her Asuka for the ceremony. I don't normally let witches and warlocks stay as guests in my home, since they try to take advantage by cornering me and pressing me with attempts to negotiate more bargains when I'm enjoying myself, but Mari's trained Asuka up nicely. I am a fallen angel, not a common demon: if you see someone else with eyes and skin like mine, that means one of my Children is visiting. Be polite," he said, tapping Shinji on the nose, just gently, before feeding him another bite, this time with the jam.

"Hikari and Touji want to become true demons, but since they're mated – Touji is Hikari's familiar - they want to go through the change at the same time so they're never apart, and Hikari is looking for someone to train up to run the household. Once they become demons, they'll be sent out to do my will elsewhere. However, even though you were offered up as a sacrifice, you offered _yourself _up. You're a sorcerer, not just a sacrifice, and the pact I've made with my worshippers… Well, eventually they'll all become my slaves, but not while they're still alive. Since your body is mine, I can do with it as I please, but I can't make your will my own until you die, not even if you want to give it to me." He patted Shinji on the shoulder, giving him a look that wasn't pretending very hard at all that Tabris was truly sorry to give him such bad news. "So, it looks like you'll have the honor of being my familiar. Do you like cooking?"

It took Shinji a moment to figure out why Tabris was asking. "I've never tried," but if he was willing to learn, then he'd be Hikari's valuable replacement, wouldn't he? That might give him some protection. Unless he was terrible at it and was punished for it, but Hikari and Touji didn't seem scared of Tabris at all.

"What about music? And would you like milk or orange juice?"

"Milk," was the first thing that jumped into his mind, since he was a cat right now, and Tabris poured a little for him and held it to his lips and _he was making his new Master act like a servant_. Tabris might regard it as a game, seemed amused to spoil him right now, but Shinji drank quickly, looking down in a show of submission and obedience. "Um, Master, may I ask what does a familiar do?"

"Whatever will please their Master. Do you have any musical training?"

"The cello, and a bit of piano." Mostly forgotten. Whatever will please their Master, though: Shinji knew what that meant, especially coming from a devil. He wasn't part of his original family anymore, and waking up here? He was clearly supposed to share his Master's bed.

He just wished he knew what he was doing. There were things that were supposed to make it hurt less, he'd heard, but everyone was looking forward to what a rough time he'd have of it. Maybe Touji would tell him? Touji was _big_, though: bigger than Shinji or even (he flicked his eyes towards Tabris just a bit: with them so close like this he could only look at his Master or himself) the devil, but that made sense: incubi were supposed to be _huge_.

Something that big had to hurt going in, so why was he getting even bigger himself, thinking about Touji and Hikari?

"Hungry for something else now?" Tabris asked him and Shinji looked up, mortified. Had he seen Shinji looking at him? There was definitely interest, expectation in those gentle-seeming red eyes, but "Why don't you eat a little more first?" Tabris asked him.

The obvious implication was that Shinji was going to need his strength. He swallowed, throat suddenly dry, and gratefully accepted another drink of milk. Eating was going to put it off, but if he ate too much, he'd get sleepy. The room was warm, and he wasn't used to that, and there was enough here to give him a full stomach three times over. "Could I feed you," um, "Master Tabris?" he tried, since that would put it off too and hopefully please him, that Shinji knew his place, that he was the servant here, not the master.

A hand in his hair again, scratching lightly behind an ear and then gently stroking down his back. So he'd said the right thing, managed to earn a petting instead of a blow. The blows would start eventually. He was a servant now, and worse. No, worse than even a wife: wives had separate bedrooms.

He had to, he had to find ways to make him useful somewhere else. Out of the master's reach. For now, he tried not to let his hands shake when Tabris moved aside a little so Shinji could scoot next to him. He tried to suppress a shudder when the devil leaned against him a little, skin to skin, as Shinji spread some honey on another bit of the scone. This was something like being a harem slave, maybe? But there weren't any grapes to peel. He hoped they'd let him have clothes: Hikari had some, but Touji didn't, except for that collar.

If he didn't have shoes or clothes, that would make it impossible to run away, not that he could escape when he'd sold his soul and was in a devil's power and what if Tabris decided that by trying to escape, Shinji had cheated somehow and Tabris could take back Shinji's price?

Thinking of his mother, roasting in the flames?

He wasn't in the flames yet, so as long as he could make himself useful around the manor, as long as he could keep his Master happy with him? It was still inevitable, but he'd known that he was going to be some upperclassman's kept boy soon enough.

All of this might be a trick, to get his hopes up, to make what would happen later even worse, but he still found himself blushing as Tabris opened his mouth to take the piece of scone, sticky with honey. It definitely wasn't weird to find a devil compellingly attractive, he reminded himself. Seducing and corrupting people was what devils did. He was going to end up a catamite, if not worse, but he'd sold his soul to a devil, so he was damned anyway.

Maybe his father approved of him a little, now that he'd done what he wanted? Maybe his mother would be upset, and want to see him again? He didn't want her to cry, but thinking that she was alive, that someone loved him and didn't want him to suffer made him feel strange inside, on top of all the other strangeness.

If he acted shameless, then maybe the devil with his skin smoother than even a woman's could possibly be would reward Shinji for it, lead him into debauchery by making it feel good instead of leaving Shinji lying there aching, coming down the next morning with a stiff gait to knowing snickers?

If Shinji leaned down and shyly, far too shyly to actually ask (or would he be made to beg?) except with blushing cheeks and large blue eyes looking from a face far too much like a woman's (like his mother's? His father had said once that Shinji didn't look like him at all, that he didn't know where Shinji got it from) would that be alright? He'd heard that they'd make you choke on it, but that had to be better than being grabbed by his thin hips and…

Tabris looked pleased, like he hadn't been expecting this so soon but he seemed to be happy that Shinji had learned his place so quickly.

At least Tabris wasn't pushing him, he just kept gently stroking Shinji's head, and it was soothing even though Shinji knew that trying to beguile him had to be the idea.

* * *

His body was calm now, and sleepy, because it had felt good and really, Tabris hadn't had to do that for him. Just because boys were capable of enjoying sex, unlike women, didn't mean a man needed to lower themselves to getting a catamite off. Unless it was to lure Shinji into temptation. To make him look forward to the next time. So even though he tensed up for a minute when Tabris started to bite at his neck, he calmed down again when the bites stayed gentle, mere touches of teeth to the skin that felt so sinful.

Because they were.

But eventually the devil would bite, would reveal its fangs, and would Shinji enjoy it then, too? Would he become so depraved that he craved this debasement?

"So is this what it will be like from now on?" he asked, because he still had some power to set terms, or something? He knew that couldn't work: he was Tabris' property, just like a wife was a husband's and a son was his father's. Just because Tabris was gentle this time, Shinji couldn't expect him to be gentle the next, or hold him to any promise to always be gentle. Unless maybe? It was sinful for a wife to not fulfill her husband's desires, but… No, Shinji couldn't risk anything that might count as going back on their deal by not giving Tabris whatever he wanted.

"Well," he was told, although Tabris took a moment to hum again, and mouth at his neck, "you should have a tour today, and there should be a fitting for your new clothing scheduled for this afternoon. Even I can't spend all day in bed. Since you're fond of music, instruments will be found for you: I would prefer it if you practiced, but otherwise you may do as you like during the day, except during ceremonial days. Since you're my familiar now, it makes sense to have you replace my current cup-bearer."

So he would be in bed with Tabris, whenever Tabris was in bed, and he'd need to get good enough at the cello to not annoy the fallen angel, and then he could see if Hikari was willing to train him, even if it wouldn't be possible for him to make friends with someone, especially not someone who was willing to become a demon.

"I," he swallowed. "If I'm still human, do I have to keep the ears and tail?"

"You want to look human? Alright, then." He seemed to regard it as spoiling Shinji, but did it contently enough, although he traced Shinji's tail from base to tip, the length involuntarily flexing between his slim fingers, and caught each ear in his teeth gently before dismissing them.

Shinji shivered, glad that he didn't feel anything else move, that there didn't seem to be anything that didn't belong. "Better?" Tabris asked him, and Shinji could feel the smile against the back of his neck.

"Yes," he said, then blanched as he realized what a dangerous mistake he'd made. "Master. Thank you, Master." He needed to remember to address his owner with the proper respect. He didn't think that there was something about this in any etiquette manual, but those who were rude to their superiors were in for a caning. He was in for eternal torment regardless, but he didn't want to start now.

A honeymoon, yes, that was what it was. Tabris seemed pleased with his new acquisition, but he wouldn't stay that way. Not when Shinji wasn't anything special. He was a coward, and stupid, and even if he looked a lot like a girl he still didn't even make a pretty girl, not any more than he did a handsome boy. Reality was going to set in, and when it did Tabris would stop caring what Shinji wanted, or pretended to want, and start doing whatever he wanted to Shinji's body. Shinji didn't really care about cat ears: they were demeaning, but it wasn't like a coward like him had any pride. He cared about bruises, welts, the marks of a beating.

He curled up a little, involuntarily, but Tabris didn't comment, just pulled him a little closer, kept humming, kept stroking (or was it petting?) Shinji's body lightly, gently. Shinji feigned sleep and the touches slowed, until Tabris hummed again, softly, and slipped out from between the sheets he'd pulled over Shinji's heated body, to keep the sweat on his skin from chilling him.

Shinji didn't remember dozing off: all he knew was that he blinked himself awake later and startled up out of bed, because if the housekeeper had made an appointment for him to have clothes made, then he would really annoy her if he missed it.

He really hoped Tabris wouldn't mind him taking the blue silk robe that was draped on a leather chair by the fire, but there was nothing else to wear. Shinji reached for it, then hesitated. What if it was a test? To see if he'd take his Master's robe to hide his own shame, when he had no more right to pretend virtue? But it did look like it was set out for someone, and he didn't have anything else to wear, and wearing clothing couldn't be banned, if Hikari was doing it, and head of the household or not she was still a servant, so hopefully he wouldn't get in trouble for thinking that just because she had a privilege someone as lowly as him also did?


	4. Chapter 4

___In the original anime, Ritsuko was ordered to report to SEELE naked so those perverted old men could gawk at her. They _know it's going to upset her and they do it partially because of that. It's very blatant that she is an object to them, there for their viewing pleasure and to be used as a tool.

_SEELE is already a creepy death cult: given how they treat Ritsuko, think about how they'd act if they were a creepy _Satanic _cult instead. Yeah. Oh, by the way, in the second draft of episode 24 (Anno's first rewrite - he got someone with experience writing Boys Love to do the first draft for him), it's revealed that Gendo has been having sex with Rei as a Yui substitute. The Second Draft of that episode is very worth reading for anyone trying to decipher the series. __  
_

_Eva uses nudity and inappropriate sexualization and sexual activity for shock value in order to hammer home a point, like trying to make sure sure the watcher feels the appropriate squick, very often. EoE is chock full of it, especially the scene meant to demonstrate that Shinji doesn't love or even respect Asuka as a person at all (by that point) in an absolutely disgusting way._

_There's also 2.22, the Reiquarium, Gendo basically whoring himself out to the Akagis so he could use 'the old hag' and Ritsuko's feelings to control them and get Yui her godhood... There's a lot of sexualization in Eva that is _meant _to be inappropriate, although that doesn't keep people from fetishizing scenes written to be absolutely disgusting (the EoE hospital scene being the chief offender)._

_When you add a setting and premise like this to an Original Flavor like that..._

_Note that in this time period in England, it was legal for a boy to marry (not just 'start having sex' but marry and gain access to sex whenever they wanted) at fourteen, which is why Tabris set that as the minimum age at which someone could sell their soul - marriage is a sacrament that involves transfer of ownership of people, so it amused him to frame the sale of souls into eternal bondage as an unholy parody of it._

_Girls could be married off at twelve, which is why Asuka could make her pact and start practicing magic a couple years ago (and she would have been vulnerable to one of the other circle members hitting her with a spell to marry them or one of their sons if she hadn't pacted and Mari hadn't made arrangements). From Tabris' perspective, all humans are younger than he is, so he's going by the local culture's definition of when people are old enough to sell themselves into bondage, and also what is and is not child abuse/statutory rape._

_By Victorian standards, Shinji is perfectly legal. It's just that those standards were messed up, and actually a giant step backwards: before 1823, the minimum age for marriage was 21 for men and women both._

* * *

When he found Hikari, almost babbling as he asked her if he was late and told her he was really very sorry if he was, she told him that was alright. "There's always alchemy that needs doing around the house, and Kaji's always happy to have an excuse to lie about the house, although I think he'll be grateful to us for rescuing him from Asuka."

She led him into a sunlit room, where a blonde woman was sorting through rolls of fabric and casting an annoyed glance at a somewhat scruffy-looking man, who wasn't clean shaven despite wearing the costume of a young professional about town. The costume was somewhat scruffy in an artful way, and Shinji thought it might have been even before the red-headed young woman who looked about Shinji's age forced him to his knees and grabbed him by his cravat.

"Asuka," the last person in the room sing-songed. "Don't you think it's time to let him go? We have company." She grinned at Shinji, who noted the cat ears in her hair, the lashing tail. Yet, despite the smile, he didn't think this person was all that happy with what was going on? Or just what was going on when they came in.

She spun around to look at them crossly, but when she saw Hikari her expression softened, or at least she looked understanding. "Hikari."

"Mistress Asuka." Hikari bowed. "Mistress Asuka, this is Master Tabris' new familiar."

"A Keel," she said, scowling at him.

"A Keel?" Shinji blinked, trying to look harmless. So this was the witch? And the cat had to be Mari. Who was already a demon.

"Lorenz Keel. The founder of SEELE. He funded the Katsuragi expe-but you don't know _anything_, do you." Her scowl deepened. "You _might _have gotten a chance to get Master Tabris' favor, _entirely _undeserved, but you're not a man, you're a catamite. You won't be able to get any real power, not any more than _he _has." She kicked Kaji in the side.

Not all that hard, it seemed: Kaji just looked embarrassed for Asuka more than anything. That slight wince wasn't on his own behalf. "Hi, I'm Kaji," he said, standing up, dusting himself off and giving him a winning smile. "You're a cute little thing, aren't you? Why don't we grab something from the kitchens and have tea out in the garden after we're done here?"

"But, but I'm Master Tabris', and I don't think he'd want me... Unless he wants infidelity?" Shinji realized, suddenly worried. Kaji sleeping with someone else's woman, or kept boy in this case, would violate one of the ten commandments, which a devil would want, but jealousy was a deadly sin, so wouldn't Tabris have it and still be upset? He looked at Hikari, hoping she would help.

"Don't worry, Shinji," she told him. "Kaji has sold his soul to our master, but he's just a low-level warlock, barely a member of the Circle. He can't demand an incubus' services, and you're not just an incubus in training, you're our master's familiar. Kaji is a free agent, but that just means anyone with the authority can have him do whatever they want. In fact, our Master will probably instruct him to answer any questions you had about witches, warlocks and the powers they might have, since you're a contractor as well as a familiar. If you want to give him any other orders, ask me what you're allowed to command him to do. Or just ask him."

Kaji gave him a sweeping bow, and another smile laden with that roguish charm.

"I'm Ritsuko Akagi. I'm an alchemist and also a dressmaker, when it suits our Master's whims." Ritsuko's smile was more businesslike, although Shinji wondered if there was a bit of bitterness in it. "Go stand in the center of that room and drop that robe," she said, measuring tape ready to use.

Shinji obeyed, and when she saw his blush, she said, "Modesty, shame: if you don't lose them fast, you won't survive the circles." Shinji didn't think she was saying that to help him: the bitterness was even more apparent in her voice, and she knew she was just venting her feelings. This was the voice of experience. "In fact," she said, circling him thoughtfully. Before pinching his rear.

She went on to pinch his thighs, calves, arms, shoulders and other parts while Shinji was still standing there frozen in shock. Then she cupped her hands and put them over Shinji's chest. "A," she said, nodding. "I'll try that one first."

"Eh," Kaji said, "cut them for a small B. If it's too generous, he can pad them. Too small would be annoying to redo later."

"A?" Shinji asked, mystified.

"Breast sizes," Ritsuko said bluntly. "What kind of young man your age doesn't know pages of unrealistic information about breasts?"

"Catamite," was Asuka's assessment, tapping her foot and looking Shinji up and down with an air of absolute boredom. "Just like Hikari's mutt. She might have picked up one with some muscle on him, unlike this _boy_, but under his bluster he's a pure submissive."

Shocked that Asuka would say something like that in front of even one of the staff, Shinji turned to Hikari, only to see her nodding.

An arm was flung over his shoulder, and he found Mari sniffing his neck. "You smell like Master," she said, and purred. "Good incubi are either extremely submissive, like you and Touji, so they can enjoy the Circle doing whatever they want to them, or extremely dominant, like me, so we can enjoy making the Circle _think _they're doing what _they _want."

"Careful," Kaji said, amused. "You're giving away trade secrets."

"Says the man who serves… how many masters now?" Mari half-sang, waggling her finger at Kaji with a catlike smirk. She had whiskers, Shinji suddenly noticed, but then they vanished again.

"What can I say?" he said, spreading his hands. "I'm a man with needs."

"And yet he still refuses to submit to me! Part of the pact I made to get my familiar is that I can never be taken by a man," Asuka said proudly, hands on her hips. "So I'll just have to take Kaji myself!"

"Both of your mothers have asked me to look after you, Asuka," he reminded her. "You may be a full-grown witch now, but I still remember when you were a child."

"Excuse me, _children_," Ritsuko snapped, snapping her fingers in front of Mari's face. "Hands off the merchandise. Or have you forgotten whose familiar this is?"

"Aww, but you and yours can whip up pretty costumes in a snap," Mari teased, jumping away lightly.

"Yes, but first we need measurements and designs." Ritsuko cracked the measuring tape like a whip, and Shinji was the one who jumped back now, not sure where the flailing end would go. "Get back here," she told him, pointing to the spot on the ground. "Maya?!" she called, looking at a door to the right of where Shinji came in.

"Coming!" a female voice called, and another woman, older than Mari but younger than Ritsuko, ran in, carrying a stack of all different kinds of cloth.

"I need Kaji to consult with on the designs. I'm an alchemist, not a fashion plate. Anyone who can't contribute, out!"

"Don't look at me, I don't wear clothes when I can possibly get away with it," Mari said cheerfully, before jumping up towards Asuka. It was a brown cat that landed on Asuka's shoulder.

Asuka sniffed audibly, like a high society matron, before turning away. "I'm sure Hikari, unlike some people, has important business to attend to."

"Actually," the girl said as she followed Asuka out the door. "I was looking forward to spending some time with you. It's been too long since we had a chance to play a game."

"Splendid. Have one of your minions fetch the chess set."

Just like that, Shinji was the only person in the room not wearing clothes. Even the collared Maya was wearing a plain shift of heavy cotton, undyed except for what might be the remains of potion splashes. She smiled at him.

"She was a bright young woman, studying medicine even if they wouldn't give her a degree in order to help people," Ritsuko explained, following Shinji's eyes to the collar. "So I got her before any of their damn brats did, so they could use her knowledge to pass exams. Hold out your arms," she told Shinji, before going back to shifting the cord and rattling off letters and numbers.

"He's going to be a cupbearer," Kaji said, "So the full kit, outfits for all of the ceremonies to match the Master's. Except the cupbearer regalia are all designed for a fallen angel, and you'll need to show off the collar, whenever Tabris fits him with one."

"And his coloring's different. Do you have anything else obvious to contribute?" Ritsuko said, rolling her eyes down at the ground instead of up at the heavens.

"Don't make them too much like a regular familiar's," Kaji cautioned her. "We can remove a little fabric later, but I don't think the Master would give a _fallen angel's _post to someone he didn't want treated with respect. If he ever decided to do something else with Shinji," Shinji wondered what that 'something else' might be, "it'll belong to a fallen angel again. You know what happens to anyone who dares to treat any of _them _like a familiar they can command." Seeing Shinji's look of not so much curiosity, but need for any information he could absorb, Kaji explained, "One of the inner circle lost a second son that way. The Master doesn't want any of the old men thinking that the fallen angels are just foreign princes they can swindle out of money, power and peasants." Because they would think that way, given half a chance. "So, bringing your mother back to life, right?"

Shinji looked down at his feet. "I'm not really any kind of noble person. I was just afraid of what my Father would do to me."

"When you're father's Gendo Ikari, that's called being sane, kid," Kaji said, ruffling his hair. "All the proper clothes for a young gentleman to wear about the house and about town, so that they'll be there if Master Tabris ever wants them, but I don't think we're going to need riding clothes any time soon, or hunting," he told Maya, who nodded and made a note as Ritsuko pulled up one of Shinji's feet. Shinji had to grab Kaji to keep his balance. "What do you do for fun?" he asked.

"I was told that I should play music, the cello and piano," Shinji told him. "And I was going to ask if Hikari wanted any help in the kitchen?" Did Kaji think that was a good idea. "Or would Ta-Master be upset that I'm doing servant's work?" if he wasn't quite a servant.

"He'll only care if any of the Circle find out and disrespect you for it," Kaji said, clapping Shinji on the back once it was safe for Shinji to let go of him. Once again, Shinji had to flail his arms and try not to fall over. "But he'll discipline them, not you. Master Tabris is fond of his pets, since most of you are future demons. I think the manor's a little like a nursery to him. He'll be pleased that you're playing nice with the others."

Shinji let out a sigh of relief.

"So, did you have any friends back home, a cute little thing like you?" Kaji asked him, since he'd answered Shinji's question.

"Not really. My father didn't want any of the servants to be familiar. At boarding school there was Kensuke, Kensuke Aida, but I don't know what happened to him," Shinji said, staring down at his feet, because worrying about Kensuke was enough that he couldn't really care that Ritsuko's hands were on his behind now.

"Kensuke Aida," Kaji mused aloud. "I'll look into that." Seeing Shinji light up, so surprised, eyes bright with gratitude, he chuckled. "If that's how you respond when someone says they'll do you a favor, the Master's going to have fun spoiling you." Shinji got his hair ruffled again, and he found himself smelling Kaji's cologne, what he thought might be the scent of a man.

Was he already having impure thoughts like that?! He'd always dreaded it before, and now?

"Heh," Kaji said into his ear. "Even Maya thinks you're a cute little thing."

Shinji jumped, and turned to see Kaji grinning at him.

Ritsuko finally let go of him to go back to the desk piled with bottles and tubing, a complicated apparatus. "Drink this," she ordered him.

He swallowed, but the golden liquid didn't look bad, just the color of wheat. It couldn't be beer, but who knew what some strange alchemic potion would do to him? He still drank, though, because he didn't think refusing Ritsuko was an option.

She watched him for a second, frowned, then took out a pocketwatch. "I already tested that batch."

"Well," Kaji said, after tapping Shinji's chest, "the most reasonable explanation is that the kid's blessing included some kind of protection against alchemy. Or at least against shapeshifting. Did Tabris say anything about that?" he asked Shinji.

"I, I said I'd like it if I could look human," Shinji said, looking down at his feet and blushing harder to see what was in the way.

"And that includes being turned into a woman," Ritsuko said disgustedly.

Kaji laughed. "All of us humans are pathetic to the Master, Ritsuko. It's probably just a blanket ward against being shapeshifted. The body belongs to the Master, after all, and he wouldn't want someone tampering with his property. Not when he's such a cute little thing already," Kaji said with a wink at Shinji.

"Will Mistress Ritsuko get in trouble for attempting to change Master Shinji?" Maya looked pale.

Kaji and Ritsuko glanced at each other. "If it was one of the Circle, definitely," Kaji said with utter seriousness, looking first at Maya and then at Shinji: this was something he needed to know too. "The Master will generally accept pleas for forgiveness. Just never, ever make the mistake of thinking it's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, or assume that he'll forgive you for doing what you wanted to do. That's disrespect, and he won't tolerate it, but," Kaji said, smiling now. "He knows that humans are sinners, incapable of self-control. He's not going to punish us too much for the weakness that makes us fail to live righteous lives and be willing to sell our souls to him in the first place. If humans weren't weak creatures, he'd still be imprisoned in the ice beneath the rest of the world. The good thing about all the ways people mess up is that if we didn't trip ourselves up, fewer of us would fall into his hands, ripe for the plucking. Just look at the Inner Circle. All the power in the world, and if they hadn't wanted more, they would have thought better of something that meant moving up the day the world ends. Tabris has already made it clear he's not interested in letting them take it with them."

"Once we die we'll, he'll… We'll be in hell," Shinji said. "So it's not that efficient to punish us now, when any minor trouble we cause him… We'll be suffering for it later." He knew it was true, that was how demons, no, how the world worked."

A large, strong hand on his shoulder, and "Regretting it?" asked Kaji.

Shinji shook his head. "I'm worthless, and a coward, and… My mother was a lot better person than I am."

Ritsuko snorted, but didn't elaborate.

They kept measuring him, and then holding pieces of cloth up to him, by themselves or in combination, until a small young girl-cat came and summoned Shinji to attend his Master in the bath. Instead of just washing him, Shinji was allowed to get in himself, and all the heat made it easy to relax, or easier than it would have been without it when Tabris put his hand over Shinji's, covering his with it the way he must intend to cover Shinji's body with his own, so Shinji should make the first move and try to see if he could perform his duties some way that wouldn't hurt, or who knew what the devil would decide to do?


	5. Chapter 5

_Shinji does have a nice ass: there's a running joke about it, and there were a lot of comments on how nicely sculpted Kaworu's ass was on one of the Q figures. Plugsuit, fetish gear, same thing, really. SEELE are a bunch of perverted old men, and then there's Gendo._

_The incubi absolutely despise human society and its moral (as opposed to ethical) codes. This is because they used to be human, not in spite of it._

_Also, plenty of obvious societal indoctrination-type misogyny, not that Shinji is devoid of that in canon because he's got the idea that women should be fulfilling his emotional needs, made worse by the fact that he desperately needs __someone __to do so and the only person who ever did was his mother._

* * *

The next morning, after Shinji woke up and curled up to Tabris when he saw those red eyes looking down at him with fondness that had to be a cover for his expectation, he wet his lips and asked shyly, with eyes downcast, if his Master had another lesson for him.

That was how he found himself with his head buried under Tabris' hair, against his neck, breathing in the scent of that pale skin, hips shaking and finally yielding to the desire to thrust back. His Master's approving hum made him yield to the urge.

He, he really was enjoying it? Something so filthy, perverted, unnatural? Corrupting people and making them enjoy perversion was what devils did, but it was Shinji's body that thrusted lustfully and trembled, wanted more. Tabris still had to grasp the curve of his rear, tell him to calm himself: the devil was pleased he wanted it, but since Shinji didn't want his body changed to accommodate such things, it would have to be trained to handle Shinji's lusts without hurting itself, and he clung to Tabris' shoulders even harder when he realized that the trembling was with excitement and barely-suppressed desire.

This, this was all him? No, this was what devils did, it was Tabris that was making it feel so good, as he lost the battle to stay still and thrusted against Tabris' stomach again, grinding needily and gasping. "Now you may please yourself, dear Shinji," Tabris told him, and Shinji gave a couple hiccupping movements and then found his rhythm again.

"How do you feel?" the angel asked him with that false, gentle concern that was almost as seductive as the hand rubbing Shinji's side he'd woken up to.

"I," he wished he could say 'I don't know?' but "It feels good, Master," Shinji answered, and had to blink. He didn't know whether the tears were because it felt so, so good or because it _shouldn't _and this was just more proof that he was damned. Tabris was unmanning him, training him to be a proper catamite, and was this the fate Shinji had been born for, with his weak will? Was this why his father despised him, because he'd sensed the eager perversion lying dormant within Shinji, the lack of moral fiber that would have led him to enjoy what the older boys had planned for him, no true man but an eager little whore?

When a pink-haired older succubus led him to the exercise room, he was greeted by Hikari's cheerful voice. "Oh, hello Shinji."

"Should I come back later?" he said, averting his eyes from Hikari, who was on top of Touji.

"Don't worry, I'm nearly finished," she said, and closed her eyes.

Finally Hikari cried out, and her hands slammed down onto the ground at either side of Touji's head to keep herself from falling over. Shinji stared: was that… but she was a woman! Was it because she was becoming a demon?

Finally, she lifted herself up off her mate, folding down the apron with a primness that didn't suffer from the fact that Shinji had just watched her debauch herself, back to being the kind and professional manager of the household before turning to Shinji with a smile. "Kaji said you wanted to learn how to cook?"

Shinji nodded shyly. "I want to be useful, if you'll let me." He didn't want to just sit around all day. If he was doomed to be lost to the deadly sin of lust, then he should work harder to avoid sloth too. He hid a wince when he heard the voice inside him reminding him that he was already damned, and deserved what was going to happen to him because he'd turned away from God and he was worthless and a coward who knew he couldn't survive on the streets and was even more scared of what would have happened if he'd refused and his father _hadn't _killed him as a sacrifice right then and there than of dying after refusing the devil's temptations and maybe having his own chance to go to Heaven.

"Well," Touji said, finally registering Shinji's presence. "Better make sure you have at least enough muscle to handle washing dishes. And laundry is _murder_. But," he quipped, "don't think you can replace the butter churn: that's my job."

"You know all about using a large stick," Hikari said, leaning back and kissing him on the cheek as Touji nimbly sprang to his feet. "See you later, dear."

"See you at Mari's, Mistress Hikari." Had he borrowed that sweeping bow from Kaji? When she left and the incubus turned to Shinji, he folded his wings behind him and crossed his arms over his abs. "Stand on the other practice mat, and let's see what you got."

Touji walked around him, poking various bits. At least it was better than Shinji had. Finally he cupped Shinji's rear and rubbed it. "You've got a _nice_ ass," he told him.

Shinji blushed. "Thanks?" What did you say to that? Since he was, well, a kept woman if not a lady of the night, he didn't really have a right to be modest, and Ritsuko's words, that he needed to lose his modesty, echoed in his head.

"Good curves on you, but we'll have to build up a little muscle under them, so you can hold positions without getting uncomfortable, keep toys inside of you, that kind of thing."

Shinji blushed and Touji laughed. "The Master's kind of vanilla, but it's good to have the option, you know? There's a lot of fun stuff you can do. Even without asking him to change your shape."

Fun? Sex was fun? Well, it was, that was the temptation of it, the debauchery, like drinking was supposed to be fun, but someone like a jock talking about it like it was hunting, or an afternoon's sport? Then Shinji realized that that _was _how the upperclassmen talked about it, especially bragging about all the doxies they'd tumbled while they were on break at home or visiting London. Except Shinji wasn't a young nobleman, even if only by his father's marriage to his mother. Not anymore. Now he was one of those doxies. So was Touji? But Hikari was the woman, right? "Is it okay if I ask something?" he said.

"Sure." Touji nodded. "You're our Master's familiar. The more you know, the better, and we're all here to help you out too, now. What's up?" he asked, coming around to Shinji's front.

"Hikari, it looked like she was enjoying what you did."

"And you're wondering if that was some incubus magic, something you can learn to give the Master a better time?" Touji guessed. "Women can orgasm too. Seriously," he said when Shinji's jaw dropped. "_They _only say women can't since they're too lazy and selfish to let the women enjoy it. The bastards only care about getting what they want, and fucking over everyone else: women, the poor here, the poor bastards in other countries… Lots of people did whatever they wanted to both of us, before we got scooped up off the streets for sacrifices. Not one of them bothered to even try not to hurt her, and only a couple of my Johns bothered to get me off. Not that I was ever in the mood, with those rough bastards. Now the _only _person I don't get off with _every time _is Hikari, and that's only because she makes sure it's even better for me later."

Like sex was supposed to be something between husband and wife? Shinji thought. But if they were incubi, then maybe it was the lack of sex that was _only _something for that special person? Tabris had always made sure Shinji enjoyed himself, and even though Shinji _knew _how strange and perverted that was, the reminder of what was normal still came as something like a shock. That the devil was so much kinder than the other boys would have been. (Or at least he was pretending to be, Shinji fought to remember.)

"The Master said once that he commented that young people like Hikari and me, who sinned just trying to survive and feed our families made good sacrifices, so those old bastards would grab us off the streets before some of the other bastards out there killed us for kicks."

Touji leaned forward and stabbed Shinji in the chest with a finger for emphasis, thankfully curling it back a little to spare Shinji the claw. "_And_ he let me bring my sister here and fixed her legs, _and _had Sahaquiel track down Hikari's sisters, since a pimp grabbed them while she was gone. The Master may be a devil, but don't you dare look down on him. He doesn't often let people stay in his bed, not after the first night. Now that Mari's left the household, none of us were having much luck seducing him, getting him to let us pay him back for everything he's done for us.

"So you're going to give him _everything_ you can get him to take, got it? You're going to exercise, and train, and make damn sure that you're making him feel damn good, you got me? Any of us here would slit a few dozen throats over an altar to be our Master's familiar, and you got it just because the Master thought it was a miracle that _Gendo Ikari _was capable of loving anyone, when he's as bad as the rest of the old men, and because you're not a complete bastard even though you come from a family of bastards that's had _thousands _of people sacrificed since before the Master even woke up. _We_ love him, and _you _just lucked out, and I want to punch you in the face for that. But I'm going to have to settle for training you, and training you _hard_, so you don't let us all down." Or _else_.

Shinji nodded quickly. "Yessir," he squeaked.

* * *

It was an hour before Shinji was rescued by another messenger, this one a boy, but Touji said that they'd be spending _two _hours a day on exercises almost every day from now on, and Shinji was only getting to take it easy today because there was a ceremony later.

The messenger led him outside, and Shinji blinked first at the sunlight, and then at what he saw.

There was a shallow marble pool in the courtyard, with a fountain, but it wasn't like any pool he'd ever seen and Shinji might have wondered at the odd, sloping design and taken a moment to realize it was like a birdbath if the bird wasn't in it now.

Tabris' wings were as white as his skin and his hair. Weren't fallen angels supposed to be stripped of their wings? Shinji felt they should be batlike like Touji's, or at least the feathers should be charred black, but then Tabris turned to smile at him in greeting and Shinji was struck by the rightness of the image, as alien and ethereal as it was.

So this must be how God made him. The most beautiful of all the angels.

Tabris couldn't be anyone else, no lesser angel. Not when he was glorious enough to make Shinji's breath catch in his throat. He could only be Lucifer himself.

He beckoned Shinji to his side, and it was impossible to do anything else. Like gravity. _A moth to the flame_, Shinji realized, and Tabris was also naked, although the drape of those wings hid most of his flesh as he lay with his head pillowed on his arms at the edge of the bath.

He smiled up at Shinji. "Do you like them?"

"They're glorious," was the word, a reflection of the glory of god.

"They take forever to preen," Tabris said, reaching up. Shinji knew now to duck his head, so Tabris could pet his hair and let Shinji kiss the back of his hand. "And they limit what I can wear, not to mention that doorways become irritating very quickly. But I'll try to take them out for you sometimes, if you're willing to help them preen."

Shinji nodded, looking at the three bath attendants. One of them handed him a bottle of oil and a brush. "Just do what we do," he was told.

A flash of resentment in the eyes of the one working on the end of Tabris' left wing: were people really jealous of him, that he got to be the devil's familiar and share his bed? Were the incubi competing to catch Tabris' eye and sate his lusts before Shinji was brought here by his father?

"_It's not like I want to be here_," he might have said, if he wasn't certain he'd end up getting that punch from Touji, if not ambushed, dragged into a closet and beaten within an inch of his life. The pink haired one, who had served as his escort somewhere recently: he thought she really hated him.

The fear that gripped him and made him draw in his shoulders was familiar, a reminder of how he'd lived for years, unwanted and afraid of the loss of whatever toleration was making them give him a roof over his head, even though his father hated him and his classmates could all see that he was worthless just as easily as his father. Except Kensuke.

Had he suffered like that because he was kind to Shinji? Because Gendo hated his son?

"What's wrong?" Tabris asked, pushing himself up, wings dragging in the water and sending a ripple against Shinji's knees.

Shinji shook his head: it was nothing, nothing worth bothering with, Shinji wasn't worth bothering with, not when there was something that needed taking care of and that was always more important than Shinji.

The chest he was pulled to was cooler than it usually was, heat stolen by the water that covered it, but Shinji still felt warm. He couldn't remember anyone else wrapping their arms around him like this before, except maybe his mother in the mists of some memory, but Tabris did it every morning and night now, and it made something inside Shinji want to relax, long to let go, because for the first time there was someone there to catch him.

"There now," said the fallen angel coaxingly. "Don't cry." Was Shinji crying? "No one who's wronged you can touch you here. No one here will harm you." Did Tabris really believe it? Couldn't it see that of course people would always have reason to hurt Shinji, since that was what he deserved? If he wasn't worth hating, if he didn't deserve it, then his own father wouldn't hate him. "I would wrap my wings around you, but you'd end up soaked to the bone. They're very heavy like this. Next time, if there is a next time you're this sad, I'll wrap them around you, wrap you up in softness and silk."

Shinji shook his head: '_Let go of me_,' he wanted to say. Because even though this was the devil, just being held made Shinji feel _safe_, and even though feeling safe should make him feel better, should make him calm the hell down and regain his composure, being safe made him want to cry all the more.

Pathetic. Weak.

The devil was only pretending to care, he had to be, and some part of Shinji was so desperate for someone to care that it would buy anything. That it responded to any hint that someone might care with tears, because it was desperate for someone to care, someone to help. Wanted to scream his weakness in disgusting blubbering instead of hide it away (children should be seen and not heard) because he was pathetic and needed someone to hear his cries and help him. Needed someone to want to help.

Kisses to his forehead, his cheek, the line of his jaw. Not open-mouthed or playful nibbles, but presses of lips, gentle nudges that told Shinji's heart that _someone was here_, someone wanted to come in, cared enough to stand there and wait for Shinji to let him in, and he let out another sob, half longing and half fear. He was weak, and he wanted to let someone, anyone in, it didn't matter if they abused and laughed at him because everyone did, but he wanted, wanted to believe that it was possible for someone, anyone, to be different. To touch him and give him warmth without hurting him. To wake up in the morning and be happy to see him there, even if it was only like someone with a pet.

Once he let Tabris in, the devil was a _devil_. Of course he wouldn't be kind to Shinji when no human ever had. Even his mother had left him. So once he let Tabris in, that was when the devil would start hurting him, he realized.

Because for now, he was being lured, being tricked into hoping. It would hurt so much when those hopes were dashed.

If he came to love Tabris, even though he _knew _better, then when the torture inevitably started?

The pain of having the person he loved torture him? Smiling and savoring his screams the way he savored Shinji's startled gasps of pleasure now? It would hurt all the more for every second now that Tabris held him, that the devil tricked Shinji's body into wanting to open his heart and spread his legs for the devil himself.

Shinji wished he could hate him for it, and he did, but he could feel the pull of inevitability and his own weakness as Tabris kissed at his tears and ran a hand down Shinji's back, as Shinji cleaved to him, eager for any scrap of comfort he could get. For the careful touches that gradually replaced suppressed sobs with repressed moans.

Tabris, Tabris was capable of making the pain go away.

When he chose not to, when he chose to inflict pain instead, when his response to Shinji's cries wasn't a soft frown and attempts to reassure him and give him warmth and pleasure but fanged smiles, it would break Shinji a million times over, until the end of days.

Tabris washed Shinji carefully with a cloth after Shinji's collapsed against him, grooming him as the attendants moved around them to preen Tabris' wings, the wings that arched overhead and Shinji longed to feel enclosed by them, as though Tabris was the dome of the heavens, the entire world, and no!

But he was too tired and sated and cynical to try to run. He knew it wouldn't do any good.

"Will you be up to the ceremony tonight?" Tabris wondered, mostly to himself, the murmurs on the edge of Shinji's hearing. "Kaji brought me such a cute little Ganymede costume for you. I would like to see you wear it, even if you can't kneel at my side this evening."

If he wasn't useful, Shinji knew, then Tabris would show his true, demonic self sooner, but even though he should want that, he didn't want the pain (coward, he was a coward, running away from reality) so he clung tighter to him and said, "I'll do it," even as the warmth lingered in his worn-out limbs. Maybe it was that pleasant delirium after the little death that made him lean up to kiss the corner of his master's mouth.


	6. Chapter 6

_I'm picking up the _Shinji Ikari Detective Diary _in hopes Dark Horse will also localize the _Petit Eva_ manga, which is on excellent crack. I haven't read the_ Petit Eva _manga yet, so I'm not quite sure that Kaworu and Shinji are as canon there as they are in the anime and Sadamoto manga, since it doesn't get much more canon than both people stating outright that they love the other person (Kaworu/Shinji is specifically there in the deliberately chosen text, not subtext that might be accidental - not to mention that you don't go out of your way to have a Boy's Love person write your first draft and then publish the two draft versions in a Boys Love magazine since that's where they belong if that's not the genre you're going for), but there's a lot of Shinji looking at Kaworu with hearts floating around his head and such._

_...Oh, by the way, have you heard that they made official Kaworu/Shinji _wedding rings_? Nothing at all like that for Asuka, Rei or Mari, obviously. Only Kaworu, since Kaworu and Shinji are the only canon pair with canon mutual love confessions, even if anime!Shinji told Misato that he loved Kaworu and manga!Shinji told the reader. Kaworu died before they were able to tell him they loved him, and now the new Q ending theme, which is the response from Shinji to Kaworu's Beautiful World, has the line 'I haven't told you anything yet.' _

_Kaworu saying in Q that they'll meet again, Shinji (or at least Hikaru Utada's version, which would have been approved by Gainax) following that up by saying 'I haven't told you anything..._ yet.' _Who's looking forward to 4.0? Because so far Rebuild 'verse is the only one of the three main 'verses without love confessions, meaning that it's the only verse in the anime/manga/movie triad where Kaworu/Shinji isn't explicit canon yet... except they already confirmed that Kaworu is timelooping to make Shinji happy, which is even more romantic, that devotion over the vastness of time, than the other versions. It would be quite silly to dial up the romance in Rebuild 'verse and advertise Q focusing on the two of them together instead of on the giant robots (the Q movie poster comparing them to the Tanabata lovers, red earbuds to signify the red string of fate...) and then make Rebuild the _only _main verse where Kaworu/Shinji isn't explicitly stated canon. _

* * *

The Ganymede costume reminded him of the silk sheets pooling around his hips: the fabric was a little heavier, but it still made him twitch and think of bed. At least the folds would hide his arousal, if being stared at by people at a Satanic mass didn't make him go limp with fear.

Tabris was also draped in something more like the fantasies of Renaissance painters than a toga out of Shinji's Latin textbooks. It left his back bare for the wings.

He seated himself upon the divan at the focus of the room first, although it was less seated and more sprawled, with an air that proclaimed utter lack of care for anything but his own comfort. The inner dignity of those who had no need to feign dignity. "My children would usually stand there, but it might be easier for you to kneel, Shinji," he said thoughtfully as he beckoned his familiar forward. "Hikari brought a cushion: will you try it and be sure to tell me if your knees need something thicker?"

"It's much thicker than the ones on the pews," Shinji said. Thick, lush: meant for comfort instead of austerity. "I don't really remember, but this isn't the room I was in before, is it?" he wondered, looking up as Tabris sat up and stretched his wings, the downbeat sending a breeze wafting through the room, disturbing Shinji's hair and some of the wall hangings.

"That room is for sacrifices and compacts," Tabris told him, smiling down at Shinji before settling his wings around himself again. "The sale of souls the Circle considers important. This ceremony is just the full moon: they'll petition me now, try to make bargains, then the prices will be paid on the next dark of the moon, or the agreed-upon time. No bargains should be made tonight, although they will have to offer sacrifices in order to earn the right to have me listen to their petty desires at all. Even so, you shouldn't need to do anything but sit there, watch and listen. If you tire, Shinji, feel free to rest your head on the divan." He tapped a part of the cushion of his throne near Shinji's head. "If I do call you forward, walk in front of them and hold out the cup to their lips. Don't lean down to give it to them, or kneel. It's possible that someone may be fool enough to try to snatch the cup: Ramiel will strike them down if they dare, so don't try to keep it from them if they try to strike you, just get back. I don't want you hurt." He reached out a little to stroke Shinji's head. "You can keep your eyes closed, if you're worried that your nervousness may show. At midnight, the humans will be told to leave, and I'll hold court for my children. Ramiel will take the Grail from you and escort you out."

"So just kneel here and be quiet, unless you tell me to let them drink from the cup, until it's time to go?"

Tabris nodded as one of the incubi, also in Grecian clothing (if not much of it) handed him a crown, woven of ivy and small lilies. "Lift your head," he told Shinji, and when Shinji pushed himself up a bit, he placed it on Shinji's head. "There," he said, smiling with inner satisfaction. "Lily of the valley, bound in ivy. If they fail to treat you with the respect that merits, I'll make them eat it. It won't kill them," he said to Shinji, looking apologetic. "Most of them have bargained for no poison to slay them, and I've given you the same protection. But they'll miss the rest of the ceremony, and likely be laid up in bed for a week if they don't have an alchemist."

"And if they lay a hand on him?" a woman's voice asked from the front of the room. As she walked forward, her black wings separated themselves from the tapestry behind her. Her skin, her eyes: another fallen angel?

"Strike them down with lightning, Ramiel," Tabris told her. "Whether they survive attacking one of mine in my own hall will be up to the bargains they've made with the both of us." Nothing more. No mercy that hadn't already been paid for, not for the likes of them.

Paid for in what coin? Shinji wondered. Touji and Hikari seemed to like the way things were, but what of the other kind of sacrifices his father had talked about? Blood on the altar? "Excuse me, Master?"

"Yes?" Tabris asked, turning back to him, the smile shared with the other fallen angel replaced with gentle concern.

No, Shinji couldn't ask about the ones who just died. If their souls went to hell. If, no, _that _they were tortured. He knew the truth behind the devil's smiles, but he shrank from the reminder. "So there shouldn't be anything but people talking?"

"Yes, provided they behave," Tabris said. "There are orgies: they seem to feel that a satanic cult isn't much use without orgies." His smile was lightly mocking while Ramiel looked more disgusted. "But those are on the quarter moons, and you won't need to attend them for awhile." 'For awhile' wasn't the same as never, Shinji knew, and thought of being pulled up onto that divan, of a warm hand sliding up under this toga, of putting his hands on Tabris' firm chest and lowering his body down onto him, like Hikari and Touji.

Such filthy, perverted thoughts! Was it really corruption when he learned to crave the devil's touch in less than two days?

The devil continued, hopefully unaware of Shinji's thoughts, of his horrible desire to push back the folds of white silk that covered that part of Tabris and beg for the devil to do disgusting things to his too-eager body. "This is a business meeting, and the majority of the Circle are businessmen, even if they've all bargained for youth and vigor. They'll take their entertainment in their own townhouses: if time was used up at this meeting by such goings-on, more of them would have to wait until the next new moon to petition me."

A laugh. "They call themselves nobility, but they're nothing but tradesmen, dickering over souls and spells. They're rather horrible excuses for humans: everyone who will be here was damned long before I met them, except for Asuka's stepmother. She was another of their victims, rather like you. She still deals with me for power, like Asuka's mother before her, since it's the only way to avoid the rest of them taking her down, although she's less of a target because she didn't slay her captor: Asuka's mother did that. But I won't bore you with their disgusting little sins: you'll hear more than enough of them tonight. You seem to think that there's no nobility in your spirit: after tonight you'll know why I turned down your father's soul, but thought yours a prize." Red eyes smiled down at him fondly. "Your humility is adorable, but you're not the only sacrifice who thought they were worthless. You aren't. Far too many of the people in this world are incapable of putting another before themselves. Their souls leap into my hands: ones like yours are far rarer gems, worth keeping, worth polishing."

Flattery was part of the devil's stock in trade: Shinji knew that, but "No one has ever said such kind things to me," he said, ducking his head to hide the blush. It wasn't fair for Tabris to start doing it now, when Shinji didn't know how to deal with it, hadn't learned any defenses against it.

"I say them because I like you, and you deserve to hear them," Tabris said, and reached out an arm for him. "Come up and sit with me," he offered. "There's no need for you to tire your knees out before anyone's due to arrive."

Shinji let himself take Tabris' arm. At least being courtly to him was normal? At least Shinji thought so? He wondered if his father was courtly to his mother. It was hard to imagine him being kind to anyone, caring about anyone.

* * *

At least he still wanted to meet with her, although Ritsuko wasn't under any illusions that he missed her. Not when he had _her _back.

As she was ushered into Sir Gendo's study, Maya at her side dressed primly as a chaperone, she should have felt a little relieved that she wasn't going to be bent over that desk, not when Maya would have to stand there watching, ignored. The familiars were furniture, even more so than ordinary servants. Ritsuko should have some pity for the young woman who loved her.

She shouldn't feel bitter, that Gendo's heart belonged to another. It always had. But at least she'd been able to get sex out of the man until now, and he was very skilled in bed.

The alchemist hid a grimace at the thought that it was Yui who trained her familiar up right.

He was her familiar again: here in Gendo's private study, his starched collar was loosened enough to reveal his Mistress' collar. That was calculated, knowing Gendo. Hell, knowing Grandmaster Keel, since the rumors that spilled from Kaji's chattering lips had it that the apple hadn't fallen far from the tree at all.

How a pair of vipers had produced a meek little thing like Shinji… No, she realized. That was skill. They'd wanted a meek, broken little thing, eager to please. That was why Gendo seduced her in the first place, since judging from Ritsuko's mother's notes, Gendo wasn't having her work on whatever alchemical project he'd needed the senior Akagi for. He wanted news of the Circle, but not just them. News of Tabris' household, of the incubi the devil favored and who among the Circle he found tiresome for their arrogance (all of them).

Grooming the boy as a sacrifice, so desperate to please.

"How is the boy?" Gendo asked her when she entered.

The room was dark, the only illumination a candle on Gendo's desk that cast flickering shadows on his face, already hidden behind tinted glasses (he had weak eyes that didn't handle bright light well) and folded hands.

"Alive. Sane." Here she was, and instead of asking how she was doing, his first thought was for a boy he'd never loved, a possession he'd sold to a new master? "He didn't embarrass himself at his first ceremony in any way that would spill over onto you: they think he's a meek little thing."

From the flash of disgust in Gendo's eyes, that was his assessment of Shinji too. Why was Ritsuko stating the obvious? "When will he be sent elsewhere?"

"At this rate? Never." Gendo _had _heard that Shinji was made cupbearer, and Tabris' familiar? Of course he would have. "Tabris let your boy spend the first night in his bed, which is not rare, but Shinji has returned every night since. He didn't even kick him out last night, but had Hikari and her familiar calm down the new sacrifices the next morning instead."

Why did Gendo look displeased? It would have been impossible for most people to tell, since Gendo was permanently disgusted with the world, but Ritsuko had known him in the carnal sense for years. "You are dismissed," he told her.

Ritsuko frowned viciously, but she was too annoyed by that kind of treatment to want to stay in his presence a minute more (or was that just what she was telling herself?). She swept out without even saying goodbye, Maya opening the door for her so she didn't have to bow to Gendo to make up for Ritsuko's rudeness as her mistress left.

Fuyutsuki was ready with Ritsuko's coat. "Have a safe trip, Dr. Akagi," he said, using the title she wasn't entitled to outside of the Circle and its secrets. The title he'd had before Yui Keel thought it would be amusing to have a professor as one of her servants: had needing to fake obedience to a mere outsider as well as her father grated too much on her? Had she broken his mind the way everyone knew she'd wanted to break her father's, if only she could find some way to win enough of Tabris' favor that she could get enough power to do it?

* * *

By the time Ritsuko was down in the lower hall, the gaslight had been turned on in Gendo's echoing study. There was no furniture in here save his desk to make it easier for diagrams to be drawn on the floor and whatever ritual equipment might be needed to be moved in.

"Well?" Yui demanded.

He hid a wince.

"I am _not pleased_, Gendo. I only had that boy in the first place as a sacrifice, so I can't blame you for realizing that." But she wanted to. "I need him back, familiar."

Neither of them spared a glance for the corner where Rei stood with blank eyes.

"We don't have enough time left before the sixteenth birthday for me to have another one that would be acceptable," Yui continued. "And I have no interest in incapacitating myself again for that long. Not when I've already missed so much time because you couldn't think of any better ideas than letting me stay dead that long and throwing away such an important piece!"

Gendo knew that as well as she did. The old men had their timetable, and he'd traded away an important part of Yui's plan to spike their wheels.

Damn that boy! How dare he matter to her, even if only as a sacrifice? How dare he be part of a plan Gendo hadn't been allowed to learn anything about, since what he didn't know the Circle couldn't extract from him? Gendo's participation had never been required, only his obedience and his intelligence. At least he'd screwed up by the numbers, but with one more day gone by and no progress towards reacquiring the boy, he'd be punished again tonight.

Another day since her return, and he still hadn't been allowed to please his mistress.

That damn Fuyutsuki was gloating behind that craggy face of stone, he knew it!

* * *

"Kaji," Misato said, finishing her drink and putting her head down on the hotel's table, "I didn't need to know that."

"Well," he said in his defense, "It's the most interesting thing that's happened in years."

"You're right," she admitted, "I did need to know about it. Putting the Holy Grail in a human's hands, even if only during the ceremonies. _Him_ having a familiar who's related to the most dangerous members of the Circle and didn't even know about them until now." A somewhat-innocent. "Someone in that household besides you who doesn't worship either Tabris or themselves." Like Kaji. "That boy… Shinji? If you can recruit him, we might be able to use him to get holy water to that devil, or…" Misato's tactical skill failed her. "But you didn't need to tell me that that devil was having sex with someone morning, noon and night _in my father's body." _

It wasn't that Kaji had forgotten that, he thought as Misato groaned. It was just that there had never been any signs of Father Katsuragi's presence. He might have tried to say that Misato's father probably wasn't still in there, forced to have a ringside seat to the debauchery, but if Misato's father's soul wasn't still in his body, then given the fact that the Father _had _made a bargain with Tabris, the only place he could otherwise be was dragged down to hell.

As long as the former priest, defrocked and cast out of his order when he not only had an illegitimate child but wanted to acknowledge it and marry the mother in addition to continuing his scientific researches, was still in there, it was possible for an exorcism to succeed, for Misato to get her father back.

It wasn't that Kaji didn't want her to have him back, but Misato wasn't his only employer, and a nest of demons in England, giving power to sorcerers who might not have used it to overthrow the government (not so far, at least) but certainly weren't above placing spells on government officials, to control them or ruin them?

Moreover, Keel was a German, one of Great Britain's rivals, and the Circle admitted members from all over Europe. He was _not _using Tabris' power in the best interests of the British Crown.

Kaji might be willing to defer to Misato, but in the eyes of his paymasters, he was obviously the one in charge and the woman was simply a witness to the early history of the cult, useful for studying Tabris and determining if it might be possible to make use of him or any of the other demons that subordinated themselves to him. Once the cult was out of the way.


	7. Chapter 7

There was already a piano in the music room when Shinji was finally shown to it: the first couple of days he'd been kept too busy for someone to schedule him time for practice, and he still hadn't had that full tour of the grounds. It was Hikari who finally brought him here, helpfully pointing out how to get here from the kitchen, greenhouse garden where the birdbath was and wing where the ceremonies were held as well as Tabris' rooms. "I know that the Master plays the piano," she told him. "Because Master and Mistress Israfel wanted to sing for him, so he accompanied them."

Shinji couldn't stay long, since he was on the way back from his first day helping Hikari in the kitchens and he needed to bathe. He definitely couldn't have touched any of the instruments, when his clothes were still a little damp. At least his hands were freshly scrubbed, but he was only wearing trousers and a rough shirt, like a boy in the fields instead of a house servant. He couldn't be seen in these, much less sit down at an instrument wearing them.

Two days after that, it was Tabris that brought him down to the music room, after wrapping a cloth of red silk around Shinji's eyes. Shinji had expected, when he woke up to be greeted by a smiling Tabris holding up that cloth for him, that he was going to stay in bed for another hour. His Master had done it before, touched Shinji while Shinji tried not to shiver because he couldn't _see_, trying to suppress the fear as instead of bows, kisses and caresses rained down on his helpless body, wrists and ankles also tied up with long silk scarves attaching them to the distant posts of Tabris' large bed.

The way he'd relaxed scared him even now. That after a few minutes of those caresses, some fool part of him had thought 'he's not going to hurt me,' and calmed. There was no hoping that the devil would stop, only the hunger for more touches, and when Tabris unbound one of his feet the relief wasn't that part of him was free to defend himself and it might be over soon, but that it meant Tabris wanted more access to Shinji's body.

He hadn't cried out for the demon to let him go: no, he'd craved physical release. More touches, more debauchery, more sin, and when it was finally over, when the knots were undone, he'd pressed himself up against Tabris and pressed a kiss to his chin, pressed his hands to that chest, because the worst thing about what was just done to him was that he hadn't been able to touch his Master. He'd wanted not to get away, but to return the pleasure he was being given. He'd whined and opened his mouth hungrily like a baby bird, craving kisses, and when he felt familiar lips touch his own? When Tabris was kind enough to give him what he wanted?

He'd felt grateful. So grateful, for the gentleness, and it was impossible to remember that Tabris was a demon. That he was only being gentle now so it would hurt more later.

Because Shinji already longed for his gentleness. He would miss it so much when it was taken away. Maybe that was part of why he was so greedy for it. He knew that Tabris wouldn't keep lying so wonderfully forever.

When he saw the cloth this morning, he sat up so Tabris could bind it around his eyes, after kissing both of them, and then began to lie back down, to make it easier to tie his limbs, but, "Come, sit on the side of the bed," Tabris said, pulling gently at one of Shinji's hands.

Tabris left the bed when Shinji's bare legs dangled over the sides, and touched Shinji's ankles. Shinji held his feet still obediently, and his eyes widened behind the blindfold when Tabris put on Shinji's slippers.

Then he took Shinji's hand again, to help him stand up. "Careful of the drop," he warned him, because Tabris' bed was much higher off the ground than Shinji's cot at the boarding school, thanks to the thickness of the mattress.

Shinji shouldn't have felt disappointed when Tabris asked him to hold out his arms and instead of doing something more exotic, he slipped Shinji's arms into the sleeves of the white dressing gown with silver embroidery that Tabris wore sometimes.

He coaxed Shinji out into the hall, carefully helped him make it down the stairs, and Shinji should have felt nervous. Not just because he was being led somewhere by a devil, but because he was walking blind and could have knocked his foot into something, or tripped, but he was in Tabris' careful hands and he wasn't afraid, even though he should be. Even though for the sake of his own sanity he had to be. Had to remember what Tabris was, what would happen to Shinji once he died.

But eventually they stopped, eventually Tabris raised Shinji's hand to his lips and kissed it, then kissed the blushes on Shinji's cheeks, and he could feel that silver hair brush his face, feel that familiar warmth. Catch the scent of him, a scent like the sea, one that meant pleasure, warmth, kindness… home.

He, he was falling in love, Shinji realized, struck with dread that couldn't even dim the besotted smile on his face as Tabris left him, not far, just far enough to open a door and lead him inside.

The devil stood behind Shinji and carefully untied the cloth.

A cello.

It looked a fine instrument, even finer than Shinji's mother's. Although hers must have looked better before it was placed in the hands of a clumsy boy, even though he'd tried not to damage it. Learning it, learning to be like her in some small way was the only thing it seemed that his father wanted him to do.

This was a gift, a princely gift, something just for him and it wasn't even anywhere near Shinji's birthday.

He should, he should think of it as part of his job, something Tabris wanted him to learn how to play so he could provide more entertainment, accompaniment for the piano, but all he could think to say was, "I'm not very good." Not so that Tabris would expect him to be terrible instead of punishing him for it, but because he didn't want his master to be disappointed.

"I'm sure you'll be fine," Tabris said, hugging him from behind. "It's my fault you haven't been able to practice since you got here. I asked them to find you an instrument, but I should have made it a higher priority."

Shinji shook his head, because no, he was no high priority. Getting him something like this shouldn't be urgent at all.

Was Tabris going to ask him to play something for him now, when Shinji was so horribly out of practice? He'd drop the bow! He'd forget every note! It would be like, like, no, far worse than any stage fright. Like someone tongue-tied in front of their crush. He didn't want to embarrass himself in front of Tabris. He didn't want Tabris to look at him with disappointment. With contempt. It would hurt so much, make him shrink away and want to die.

It would be torture, so, he knew, one day he would see those looks in those wine-red eyes. Tsking over how Shinji couldn't even cry and scream right, when his voice was hoarse from hours of torture, torture that would never stop, eternal torment. No hope that Tabris would smile for him, happy to see Shinji instead of Shinji's agony, ever again.

Just thinking about it made him weak in the knees, and Tabris helped him to the chair that was there for him to sit in while he played, and asked him what was wrong, and all Shinji could do was shake his head, ache inside when Tabris touched his cheek, gently trying to get Shinji to look at him (instead of away, like a coward), to tell him what was wrong.

All Shinji could do was shake his head.

"Shinji?" Tabris said coaxingly.

"I'm, I'm just happy, Master," he said, and it was terrifying how easy it was to pretend to be utterly besotted. How true it was. "You found this for me, because you thought I was good enough that it was worth listening to me play, but I'm not that good, Master. I'm not." He was going to let him down, and his shoulders hunched in, anticipating the blows. Remembering them.

"Oh, Shinji… That's what practice is for. Doing it over and over again, until it sounds good to you. My Israfel wanted me to accompany them when they sang for me, so I had to teach myself how to read the music, and which key was which. I'm fairly good at it by now, or at least Makoto doesn't look so annoyed anymore, but Cecelia said she liked that I was trying, and I think… If you wanted to play for me, if you wanted to try to create something beautiful for me to listen to, I would be very happy just with that."

Tabris said such wonderful things, and it wasn't _fair_. How was Shinji supposed to remember that it was all lies, from the Prince of them, when he wanted it to be real? He wanted it to be real so much he really would sell his soul for it, if his soul was still his own.

He was more than a little in love, no, he had fallen completely for the person Tabris pretended to be, he admitted to himself. How long before he let himself forget the reality, believe the lie, because he wanted it so much? Needed it so much he flung himself up against Tabris' chest, wishing that chest wasn't covered by a coat of black velvet brocade?

Thinking that he could open that coat, could sink to his knees, could take Tabris a good way into his mouth now, although he still had to be careful of choking. He knew how to use his hands on what he couldn't fit into his mouth yet, but right now his mouth was occupied with his Master's, a part of him so happy that Tabris responded to the press of Shinji's lips, was kissing him thoroughly now. Shinji's knees had gone weak again, but the strong arms around him held him up until Tabris finally set him down again into the chair, desperate for air.

Shinji panted, trying to catch his breath. He had to please Tabris, he had to show his thanks for the gift. He had to be a good servant. If he pleased his master, then his master wouldn't grow bored with pretending to be so kind to Shinji. The longer Shinji went without screwing up, the longer Tabris would stay _his _Tabris, his Master who was so kind to him.

He was such a coward, he was so terrified of losing that, and it was so cruel of Tabris to torture him like this. He wanted to hate him, he wished he could hate him, but that gentleness unmanned him.

The voice saying "Shinji?" when he dropped to his knees, wondering if Shinji was ill, and then the hand that touched his head when he opened Tabris' coat, not pulling him forward demandingly but just a reminder that Tabris was here, that Shinji should go at his own pace. Permission for Shinji to do what he wanted.

As though there was nothing wrong about what Shinji was doing, but that was the point. It _was _wrong, and making Shinji into a sinner, a pervert and a catamite was all according to plan, right? As long as Shinji was obedient, there was no need to break out sterner measures to force him into compliance with the devil's desires? Right? Shinji could hope?

Except the command to abandon all hope was graven on the portal to his soul's destination.

When Shinji finished and sat back, the devil scooped Shinji up in his arms and carried him over to the couch, opening the folds of the robe Shinji wore and giving Shinji the same pleasure as though there was nothing at all to be self-conscious about, nothing at all opposite about a master pleasuring their servant and looking up at Shinji's half-lidded eyes and gasping mouth with warm delight.

Afterwards, he felt so, too warm and sated. He just wanted to curl up with Tabris on the couch and let the devil keep lying to him by pretending to care.

He watched Tabris fold Shinji's robe closed, and adjust his own. "The cello isn't the only surprise I have for you today," the fallen angel said. "Let me know when you're ready."

Shinji didn't think he could be ready. Didn't think he could take any more kindness without crying like the baby he was. Then he realized that 'when you're ready' sounded like Shinji might need to steel himself.

Had he forgotten? Surprises didn't have to be pleasant. When Tabris showed his true colors, that would certainly come as a surprise to the part of Shinji that had been taken in. "I'm okay," he said, even though he wasn't.

He was given a brief, doubtful look: was he sure? But Shinji did look sure, so his Master smiled at him. "Wait here," Tabris told him, and left the room.

A short figure, too short to be a full-grown man entered, wearing a black hooded robe. Shinji tried to peer under it and saw a patch of reflected light, but when they pushed back the hood he was still startled to see "Kensuke!?"

That familiar grin: Kensuke was alright, better than alright, and Shinji had never been so relieved. "I heard you were sent to the workhouse, because of my father," he said wretchedly, he felt so horrid because of it.

Kensuke waved it off. "Oh, we were, but the recruiter that took us was from one of Iruel's factories – not your Father's, my father would rather have done something permanent than work for _him_, not after what he did to get his hands on our land, but the factory belonged to another one of the Circle. Iruel noticed how much I knew about ships, trains and military technology, and I was moved somewhere else. I'm one of my Mistress' knights now," Kensuke said proudly, and Shinji noticed the sword that hung at his side.

"Iruel?" another demon? "You sold your soul too?" Kensuke… And it was Shinji's father's fault, even if not Shinji's. Unless Kensuke was lying, and they'd found him and taken his soul because Shinji mentioned him. Because Kaji tried to find him and Tabris found out and thought it would be useful, a way to manipulate Shinji. Earn his gratitude.

"Oh, no." Kensuke shook his head, sitting down. "The members of the Circle that own factories bargain with Mistress Iruel to control their workers' minds. Same with their private armies and bully-boys. The sorcerers do it because that way they don't need to pay the workers, just provide food and a room for them all to sleep in. It's better for us since we don't get hungry, cold, tired, or injured. Or dead: your father's factories especially are deathtraps if you've worked too long, gotten tired and don't watch where you put your feet, if they didn't have Mistress Iruel in their minds looking out for them. You've heard about how the lower classes drink all the time when they get off work? It's because they ache, and they need it to fall asleep. Everyone kept telling me how lucky I was, that I didn't have to work at a normal factory. It was _much _better at the factory than at the workhouse even before they noticed that I was smart and brought me to Mistress Iruel's attention. My father's still doing well: his leg used to ache in cold weather, old war wound, but Mistress Iruel's power keeps us healthy. And young. I'd give her my soul, but since she's controlling my mind and body right now, that's not allowed, and I don't want her to free me even long enough for me to pledge myself again. I was really worried she'd release me when she said that Master Tabris was looking for me."

He gave Shinji a pleading look, a 'come on, let me check your Composition notes?' "I don't mind visiting you, it's good to see you, but please don't ask for me to become your servant, okay? Mistress Iruel's got me doing some really cool things. I'm going to get to work on _warships_," he said, voice laden with reverence.

"That's alright?" Shinji said haltingly. He didn't want Kensuke to be stuck in this house: what if he was turned into a demon like the pink-haired girl, who had already left to go corrupt others? "But is it really okay, that a demon's controlling your mind?" he asked, even knowing what the answer would be.

Controlling the mind of someone who had sold their soul, he'd learned from Kaji, put the bargain in doubt. Someone (an angel?) could argue that they hadn't chosen to damn themselves of their own free will, not when their free will had been taken away.

So Tabris had to control Shinji's feelings the old-fashioned way, by pretending to be so kind to him, and he was terribly perfect at making Shinji adore him.

Without that protection, when love spells existed (according to Ritsuko), the devotion in Kensuke's eyes when he named Mistress Iruel probably seemed real enough to him. The demoness could have made herself Kensuke's goddess, someone he'd damn himself a thousand times over in order to win a smile from her, or the right to kneel at her feet, with just a wave of her hand.

At least, at least Kensuke was a good person? He seemed happy now, and at least there was some chance his soul could still go to heaven?

Unlike Shinji's.

* * *

_The names (and appearances) of the two Israfels are taken from _Campus Apocalypse, _just like Ramiel's in the last chapter was from that manga. _Campus Apocalypse _has angels that need to possess humans: how could I _not _use 'demonic possession_'_ for this fic?_

_Also in CA, Iruel uses a video game as her host and controls people, including Kensuke. Iruel is the Angel of Terror, so the correspondence to people's emotions, and how controlling someone's emotions controls their thoughts is appropriate. _


	8. Chapter 8

There was another ceremony that night: Shinji helped Tabris get ready again, but the bath was an indoor one instead of the one in the greenhouse garden, since Tabris wouldn't be showing off his wings during this ceremony. They'd get in the way.

The quarter moon. Curves and curving bodies.

"The obligatory orgy," said another fallen angel, this one a young man in a fur-trimmed coat with a woman leaning against the wall next to him, equally casual.

"You don't have to attend, Ramiel," Tabris pointed out, smiling to himself. They both knew that Ramiel wasn't actually reluctant to be here.

Ramiel? But Ramiel was a demoness. A woman. Shinji blinked. Wait, the black-haired woman next to the silver-haired fallen angel. She looked familiar.

She waved at him.

"Keiko's another of my host bodies," Ramiel said, tilting his head in her direction. "I was wearing her during the last ceremony. This one's Keita."

"Our true forms are sealed away," Tabris explained. "SEELE released me from my slumber, but in order to act within the human world, we still need to possess human vessels. Most of us subdue the souls of our hosts, but Israfel possessed an infant while it was still within the womb, so the body was never given a soul of its own, Gaghiel prefers to possess animals and Ramiel treats his hosts more like familiars. Don't be surprised if he switches back and forth between them a few times during the ceremony."

Shinji nodded. That was a little worrying. What if Tabris chose to possess him? While he was inside Shinji's head, what if he saw that Shinji wasn't as taken in as he pretended to be, that he had been working so hard to please Tabris in order to save his own skin instead of because he was devoted to the fallen angel?

Hopefully that wouldn't happen during the ceremony, though. He'd wondered why he was draped in so many layers of colorful fabric for an orgy, but there wasn't a cushion to kneel on close to Tabris' divan-throne. Was he supposed to kneel on the fabric of this thing instead? He went to one knee carefully, but Tabris saw and said, "Come up onto the throne with me, dear Shinji."

That meant… at an orgy… Everyone would see him submitting to the devil?

Tabris didn't see someone coming in while he and Shinji were occupied as any reason to stop having his way with Shinji's body, so Shinji had gotten used to it a little. Hikari and Touji and most of the others in the household were friends, and he got the sense that they approved. Well, some of them were a little jealous, like the pink-haired succubus whose name he hadn't gotten before she left, but they certainly didn't stop what they were doing just because he came down into the kitchen to help with dinner, so seeing people have sex was almost just a part of his new life, just like seeing people with wings and cat ears.

At least no one here would be any better than he was? The only men here who weren't familiars and incubi would be ones who had voluntarily sold their soul to the devil. He could tell himself that everyone here was equally damned, should be equally ashamed of themselves? Was he pathetic enough to care about their opinion?

Yes.

He huddled against Tabris' body, was grateful when the fallen angel draped a large layered sleeve, the outside red and gold, over him. "Will I need to do anything besides…" he let his voice trail off.

"All my cupbearer does during this ceremony is refill my wine," Tabris said. "I don't usually participate, much less buy any souls during this ceremony. The humans are much too busy committing venal sins. They don't want anything that will distract them from their orgy."

Shinji understood the temptation, looking at the lines of Tabris' body under the draping cloth. They were damned already, so why not let their lust run wild…

"Yet it is a ceremony," Tabris continued, "so I thought perhaps I could make something of a ceremony of it. For you. I had to take possession of your body to complete our pact before I could revive your mother at the ceremony where you gave yourself to me, so I think it might be a good idea to clarify your status for the Circle. So they know that you should be honored for your self-sacrifice, instead of treated as just Gendo Ikari's sacrifice."

As something unwanted Shinji's father had thrown away? No more wanted than the sacrifices the others grabbed off the streets?

* * *

"Hold out the cup to me when I ask for it at the beginning of the ceremony," Tabris had told him before the ceremony started, "and I will add some of my blood to it, as I do for the pacting ceremonies."

Normally, Tabris' hands didn't have claws. Shinji would have noticed. Now, Tabris passed a nail over the inside of his wrist, and blood ran down his hand, pouring into the cup. A second brush of his hand, and both claws and blood were gone from his hands.

Tabris took it from him now, took a sip, and then lowered it to Shinji's lips.

"When I hold it to your lips, drink, and after that you can drink from it freely, whenever you like." From the Master's cup, the one that granted the sorcerers their powers, the Grail they had to pay in lives and souls to drink from.

Shinji didn't think the warm, tingling feeling was just the alcohol. A wave of flame washed through him, setting him alight for an instant. It didn't hurt, but felt like sitting with his back to the fire, like a lizard basking on a stone. Unlike the first time he drank, this time he didn't fall asleep. He was able to stay kneeling, and arch his neck up obediently when Tabris reached into one of his large sleeves for the soft white leather collar set with rubies that would mark Shinji as Tabris' familiar.

Perhaps he should have felt something when it closed around his neck. Some sense of being owned or trapped, the awareness that this could choke the life from him, but he was already trapped, already owned. This was just a symbol, and drinking the blood had already reminded Shinji of the reality. Of the way he sold his soul and damned himself.

There was no discomfort, or desire to get it off, even though he should hate what it symbolized. He was just grateful that Tabris helped him up onto the divan afterwards, and let Shinji lean against him again.

The blood and perhaps the wine left him as tired and languorous as if they had just had sex. Tabris stroking his hair while Shinji rested against him, caught up in the afterglow, was something he'd fallen asleep to many times now.

Tabris' blood tasted like ordinary, human blood, not demonic ichor. Maybe that was because he was possessing a human body?

He felt Tabris kiss his forehead. "I should have put one on you before now, so there could be no confusion, but I like your neck," the devil murmured in his ear, before nibbling that neck and demonstrating how he liked it.

When he bit the side of it, pushing up the collar to get at that one spot, that was when Shinji seized up, felt caught and held. When Tabris released him and he could move again, his hips flexed against Tabris' body.

"So beautiful," Tabris murmured, and when Shinji looked up into those eyes, it was so easy to let his world narrow down to just the two of them. Just what Shinji's heart and body wanted and that beautiful mask, that smile offering him everything. "What do you desire, my beautiful boy?"

Shinji's hips pressed against him again. He couldn't help it. He didn't want to. He wanted Tabris to reach up inside those layers of cloth and, "Please, Master?" He wanted Tabris to reach up and fondle him gently, but asking for that in front of people would be dirty, even if those people were doing much dirtier things.

What did it say about him, that he was addicted to Tabris' gentleness? To waking up to see someone smiling down at him, happy he was there? Pretending to care about him?

Weak. He was weak, and this was a lie, and it was going to hurt so much when Tabris stopped kissing his forehead and telling him that he was a prince among men, that his heart was fragile (so, so easy to break him, the part of Shinji that was still sane heard) and yet it shone, like glass, so beautiful.

It wasn't fair. How was he supposed to resist?

He wasn't. He was already lost, already damned.

* * *

Reporting to Misato at a bar was much more pleasant than reporting to a dark room full of a circle of hooded figures. He was pretty sure he knew who all of them were by now – the list of backers of the Katsuragi Expedition was illuminating – but it was a setup meant to intimidate. To make it clear that they could, and would, squash him like a bug. He was technically part of the circle, since he'd sold his own soul to Tabris. If he died, he'd end up in hell ready and willing to give an account of what happened to him. The only way to get away with murdering a fellow sorcerer was to make sure they didn't know who had killed him, and Kaji had bargained for power just like the rest of them. Even if he'd gone more for things like better hearing to detect assassins than turning his business rivals into slaves. He liked the other newspapers. People who gathered intelligence and then just published it made his life easier.

These men might spend the lives of others like coin, but even if he wasn't a Peer of the realm, much less their peer, their equal in the Circle, he still had the right to stand here, instead of kneel with a collar around his neck. Normally, none of these men went out without familiars as bodyguards, but the deliberations of the Inner Circle of SEELE were secret.

Full of secrets that all of Kaji's employers would love to get their hands on.

"Yui has still not appeared in society," one of them said. "Nor has Ikari left for the continent as you assumed he would."

'You' was another member of the Circle, who responded. "We agreed Yui would be unwilling to remain in hiding, so he would have to meet someone who supposedly resembled his dead wife. A whirlwind 'romance' on the continent."

"Or an American heiress so he could acquire her father's factories. That would suit Ikari better," came a mutter from another hooded figure. "It was difficult enough to arrange Yui's death in the first place. What are we going to do now?"

"We?" the man standing next to him said. "A wayward daughter is her father's responsibility, if her husband won't restrain her." Both of them had to be giving Keel dirty looks under the hoods.

"My brethren, I am aware of my daughter's transgressions, but such matters are not for the ears of outsiders," Keel said. Which meant Kaji. Busted. "So, do you have anything else to report?"

Other than that Yui Ikari hadn't done anything that would have appeared on the society pages, that Kaji had come across in his persona as a reporter?

There was also his persona as the Circle's official… not quite 'gossip,' but everyone knew he gathered information, and that he ran errands for various people, and that people shouldn't tell him anything they didn't want someone else extracting out of him later. It was better to smile and play the gossip than have people break out the thumbscrews and pain curses. So "I haven't been allowed to see her," he said, "but Gendo's asking about his son. I found that a little curious, so I did some digging and I found that he had a detective on retainer checking Shinji out at his school, reporting to Gendo on how Shinji's interactions with his peers seemed to be going. One report that Shinji had made a new friend, and a week later a member of the House of Lords is in the workhouse. For a common-born industrialist, even the widower of your daughter, Master Keel, to have enough clout to do that? He must have spent sacrifices like water to compel the necessary people."

"In order to make sure the boy was miserable enough to throw his life away, obviously," said one of the men impatiently.

"Ikari shouldn't have needed to do that. A son is his father's property. The boy seemed obedient enough, and ours sell their souls when we damn well tell them to," said a gruff, accented voice.

"Those of us who have been paying attention have noticed that his Infernal Majesty will only revive the dead if the person requesting it loved the deceased," Keel said flatly. "Yui was taken care of when the boy was too young to have many clear memories of her. Ikari needed to make sure the child had no one else to love. See how he's responded to the devil, even though he's protected from the devil's power to control minds by the purchase of his soul." Lucifer wouldn't want Heaven declaring the transaction null and void. "We humans are infinite in our cruelty, and our hunger for the divine love none of our fellow, selfish humans can grant us. Yui was cast out of our circle because of her selfish desire to obtain the power of God for herself. Now a son groomed to be willing to sacrifice his body and soul for her has become an intimate of the Lightbearer. Gendo Ikari may have been preparing for this day for ten years. We must act, and quickly. You are dismissed," he told Kaji.

Who bowed and left, as much as he wanted to stay. Keel was spendthrift with his power, and quite willing to throw a lightning bolt at someone who wasn't moving as fast as the head of the Circle wanted if it seemed they didn't know their place.

"All these years, and we still haven't found the messiah," one of the Circle said, sounding more than a little worried.

"I'm just glad that Yui's revival means we have our Whore of Babylon back," said someone who had remained silent while Kaji was present. "Given how her son has joined with the devil so quickly, we have our antichrist as well."

"I still say it's Gendo. Yui brought him into the circle, and either way, traitor or not, Yui should _not _have been assassinated. As the Whore of Babylon, of _course _she was going to try to imperil mankind's salvation for personal power! By doing so, she would have brought about the end of days, when God intervened to punish her for her blasphemy."

"Perhaps Keel's daughter has done his work better than he has… We may have freed the devil, but he has yet to unleash his armies on the world."

"He must wait for the trumpets," Keel said quellingly, "which wait for the Messiah's order."

"We have youth, but not eternal youth. If we die before the end of days…"

"We all chose to damn ourselves in order to bring about the City of God, to end this corrupted world and bring forth paradise. Are you afraid now?" The contempt in their leader's voice was clear. "Without faith, no one cannot be saved: doubt now, and no matter what happens, you will not number among the Elect, who are worthy to enter into God's Kingdom."

He looked around the room, even if their cowls prevented him from being sure he had met their eyes. "This world is corrupt and sinful. We have all worked to feed that corruption, to bring down God's wrath upon the world. The devil desires human souls, and once the world ends, there will be no more for him to torment. Yui's death was necessary because she tried to use her knowledge of our true purpose as leverage. If she told Lucifer the truth, that we were planning to betray him from the beginning, who knows what might have happened? We know that he intends to gather as many souls as he can: he may decide to farm this world, produce as many corrupt souls as he can without making God send his son to destroy this irredeemable world. Freeing him gave us the power and youth we needed to do God's work, but the devil is a powerful enemy, who works in opposition to God. The devil released Yui's soul as part of his compact with her son: we must _not _allow her to meet with him again. We cannot allow her to sell our secrets to him. If she is the Whore of Babylon, that just makes it certain that she will!"

There, now they understood. "We must find the Messiah and pledge our service to him before the devil realizes our true plans," he reminded them. "Only the Elect will be saved, and allowed to enter the City of God. The world's population grows, but the number of those who will be saved is already set. To allow too many new souls to be born is to doom those millions to damnation. No matter what, we must work to hasten the sounding of the trumpets and the breaking of the seals. This world must end!"

* * *

"So?" Misato asked in the waiting room of the head of the newspaper, too impatient to wait. A full meeting of the Inner Circle?

Kaji glanced at his boss, who was tactfully ignoring them as he read over some copy for the next day's London Times. He wouldn't have put up with a normal employee having a cryptic conversation in front of him, but he knew that Kaji was an agent of the Crown, placed among the society section's reporters so that he could move among the elite and try to figure out who was in league with foreign powers. "They're still focused on the woman that returned from a certain place with a scorching hot climate not long ago. I tried using some information about her son to see if they were interested in that, but they weren't biting. I think they're too worried about her to pay as close attention as they normally do to other things. Even the royal household itself."

"Then you think you can…"

"Give me at least another week," Kaji told her. "It takes time to develop trust, and we've both got busy schedules."

She grimaced, but nodded. "Keep me posted."

"Will do," Kaji said, and left.

Elsewhere, Tabris opened his eyes, smiling down at the human sleeping in his arms.

* * *

_In Campus Apocalypse, Ramiel's first host is male, but that body gets damaged in battle. The poor unfortunate soul who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got grabbed as a replacement is a salarywoman. The others are more concerned with passing for human than Ramiel is, so they don't change their bodies as much. It's a real shame they had to wrap it up in four volumes instead of maintaining the pacing of the Iruel Arc: I wish we got to see the other angels' equivalents of Ramiel's battle forms. _

_That one pet name is a reference to 'Beautiful World.'_

_Posting this early as thanks to the person on tumblr whose username is currently wheres-the-phone. I hope they like the chapter!_


	9. Chapter 9

So easy to get used to being woken up with kisses, with murmurs of his name and by a hand smoothing his hair. So easy to get used to waking up in a warm bed, with a warm body next to him, to red eyes that smiled when sleep-hazed blue blinked up at them from under messy brown hair.

Shinji should have had a brief moment of panic when he saw those red eyes, when he remembered that a demon was about to have their way with him and he could do nothing but submit.

Instead the brief moment of panic was because he wasn't wearing the collar. "Where is the collar, where did it go?" he asked, looking around.

"I took it off you." Tabris sat up, looking a bit concerned that Shinji was so worried. "I had it made loose enough that it might have gotten caught on something or pressed at your throat at an angle, if you left it on while you were asleep. You toss and turn in your sleep very often, although I haven't had to wake you out of any nightmares."

"Oh." Oh thank goodness he hadn't lost it and his Master didn't seem upset.

"You don't have to wear it," Tabris told him. "It's so that you won't be bothered more than anything. The Circle, especially the younger members, are used to having their way with any stray incubus… with any person they can catch and hold down without consequences." Tabris looked slightly angry at the thought: had one of them offended him before, by treating his property like it was theirs? "That sort is only allowed on my property for the Ceremonies, and only in the entry wing where such things are held, but I've heard that several of them want to take your measure, and preferably more than that, if they find you outside my sight or Ramiel's. The cup you bear is an object of power: some of the more foolish ones dream of putting the fear of themselves into you, and forcing you to throw it to them at one of the ceremonies. The collar is a symbol of my protection, and even if it marks you as 'only' a familiar, it marks you as _my _familiar, so the ones with any self-preservation at all… It would be a shame if I had to kill them for laying a finger on you. It would make the others nervous."

"But they should be nervous, shouldn't they?" Shinji knew.

"Yes," Tabris said with a smile, as though he was sharing a joke with Shinji, as though they were friends, "but it's easier for me when they forget that. When they think of me as just another foreign prince to be used, some Indian maharajah who can be turned into a servant until they get around to staging a coup. It infuriates Leliel that they dare think of me that way, but it certainly has made things so much easier…"

"To get souls. And get them to bring you sacrifices." Shinji looked down at his hands, clenched so hard the nails were digging into his palms.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the movement, Tabris' nod.

"You hold them in contempt," Shinji knew. "What…." No. No, he told himself.

Even if that collar was like the one on Touji and Touji and Hikari were in love. Even if Shinji's reaction to thinking he'd lost it was far too much like he'd just lost a wedding ring, or at least an engagement ring.

"They deserve no better." The contempt in Tabris' voice was naked, now. "When they awakened me, they had a child sacrifice ready. Nothing but a child, so they could be sure she was a virgin. They deliberately made plans to free the embodiment of evil, a being that hated their entire species and wanted nothing more than to torture all of them eternally, and they _offered it innocent children_." A laugh now. "I told them that the death of a child was useless to me. If they die before they can commit any significant sins, then they have escaped my grasp, have they not?"

"That's what you care about, isn't it?" Shinji said, staring at his hands. "We're the children of God, he loves us more than he loves you, and that's why you want us to suffer, isn't that it? You want to hurt him by hurting us. Kensuke… he loves Iruel. He'd do anything for her, but she made him love her, didn't she? Just like you're making me love you."

"I wouldn't control your mind," Tabris said, sounding puzzled.

"Because God might free my soul from you if you did it with magic. But that's only with magic, isn't it? The cello, finding Kensuke, being so kind to me all the time even though I'm pathetic and not even any good in bed… You're doing it to make me fall in love with you, aren't you?" Shinji's chest heaved, breath coming fast: the rational part of him kept demanding to know what he thought he was _doing_, this was _insane_, but he couldn't take it anymore! "And it's working," he whispered, panic rising. "It's working, I'm falling in love with you, I'm besotted with your lies, and it's going to hurt so much. When you start hurting me. It's going to hurt, it's going to break my heart, so please! Please stop! I've seen through your tricks, so there's no point to it anymore, is there? Stop pretending you care about me! I know better, I've known better from the beginning! You hate humans, there's no way that something like you could love something like me! There's no way anyone, anyone as wonderful as you pretend to be would love someone like me!"

"Shinji," Tabris said, reaching out a hand, and Shinji didn't know if it was to soothe him or hit him and he didn't know which one would hurt worse, in the long run.

Both of them. Both of them would be too much for him to bear, and Shinji cringed back, fleeing back against the headboard, as though having his back to a corner of the bed was any kind of protection against his Master's displeasure. "Don't," he begged. "Don't!"

The hand came closer, and a wall of light sprang up in its path, flickering into and out of existence. Tabris flinched back, staring at it with shock and no small amount of horror. Shinji had never seen pain in his eyes, or any kind of vulnerability, and even if it had to be pretense, or just unhappiness that Shinji had seen through his ruse, or a new trick, it still hurt him, to see Tabris unhappy, and the wall of light flared and solidified.

"Why would you…" Tabris stared at the wall, reached out to touch it. Gently, with that deadly gentleness, and Shinji felt the caress.

"What, what is this?" he asked, almost jumping out of his skin. "What are you doing?"

"I gave you power," Tabris said, acting as though he was the one trying to remain calm. "To protect yourself. This is the power of your soul, walling you away from… This would only appear if you truly, truly believed that I sought to harm you. You… you really think I'm going to hurt you."

"Stop," Shinji begged. "Stop looking so hurt, I can't take it! You win, alright? You win! It worked! You made me love you, even though I knew better, and now I can't, I just can't! You're going to torture me when I die, you're going to laugh at me the way you laugh at the other sorcerers, because they were foolish enough to give you their souls but I'm even more foolish, aren't I? For letting you take my heart!"

"You really think that?" Tabris asked, acting as though he was the one who should be begging Shinji to say it wasn't true. "What did I do that made you think that? Was it the collar? Did that make you think that you were only a toy to me? I didn't… Shinji, I meant that to…" His eyes widened. "No. You've thought this way all along, haven't you? Then why did you stay in my bed?"

"Because I sold you my body, didn't I?" Shinji reminded him. "I had to do whatever you wanted! If I didn't, you were going to torture me until I did, so the only way I could protect myself was by keeping you happy! I'm worthless, so I didn't mind you doing things to me if it meant my mother could live, but you made me enjoy it! You acted like you cared about my pleasure because you cared about me, instead of because you were trying to turn me into a depraved catamite! I played along because I'm a coward, but I'm weak! I was weak enough to want to believe that it was real, and I'm in love with you, you bastard! You've won! So stop, stop, please stop pretending!"

"Because your heart is breaking," Tabris said, and if there was any color to his skin at all, he would have blanched. "Because every time I'm kind to you, it breaks your heart, because your heart loves me and you think that I don't love you back, so every time I try to make you feel loved, you think I'm doing it to hurt you, and being hurt by the one you love is… Oh, Shinji. I am so sorry. I didn't know. I thought you knew that you didn't need to stay in my bed, that… I saw that you wanted to be near me, that you kept reaching out to me despite your shyness, and I didn't realize you thought you had to, and then I saw that you were beginning to love me, and I thought it was of your own free will." His hand touched the translucent wall of Shinji's soul, stroking it gently as he looked at Shinji beseechingly. "Shinji, I didn't mean for you to hurt like this. Please believe me. I never wanted to hurt you."

"Of course you did!" Shinji screamed, because this was too much, too painful, Tabris was too perfect an actor. It _hurt_ so much, so heartbreakingly perfect, tempting him to believe that it was real. "You're the devil, and I'm a human! Why would you buy my soul if you weren't planning to torture me when I died?!"

Tabris looked serious, focused, contemplating something important enough to make him frown, and Shinji dared to hope that Tabris was failing to see a way out of that one, that he'd be forced to drop the ruse.

"Then you will just have to never die," was what Tabris said finally, resting his hand on Shinji's soul, trying to be a steadying presence, to calm them both. "You are mine, and I cannot release you. If I did, you would be killed within days, and your soul would be lost to me. I cannot bear that. Otherwise, I swear to you that I would give you your freedom, if that would prove to you that I care about you. Except I don't think it would, would it?"

Shinji shook his head. "You'd just try to make me give you my soul again, so you could taunt me, say that I had a chance to go to heaven and I gave it up because I was stupid enough to think that you could love someone pathetic like me. And you'd take my mother back. That was the bargain, my body and soul so she could come back to life, so I can't go back on our deal, and you know it!"

"Oh, Shinji…" Tabris looked so sorry for him. "I haven't given any of them immortality. It would defeat the purpose. But I will give it to you. Not just the appearance and health of youth, but the reality: your clock will not run out. And even if, somehow, you were to die and your soul come into my realm, I would bring you back to life upon the instant. You sold me your soul and your body: well, I return to you your body. It will always remain yours, just as it was on the day we made our pact. I swear that I will never cause you pain in this world, not if I can possibly prevent it, and I will not let you linger even an instant in hell.

"Shinji, I didn't mean for you to suffer like this. I don't want you to suffer like this. I thought… I thought you loved me. Not just worshipped, but loved. I thought that your shyness was that you were not used to anyone loving you, I thought that when you overcame it, it was because you wanted me to show you what it was like to be loved, to teach you happiness and pleasure. I thought I made you smile, that you enjoyed it when we played music together, that you didn't care about the power I could offer you. You didn't ask for anything but my company, and I wanted to make you happy because it made me happy, to see you smile and think that it was genuine. That I, that you…" Tabris closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the barrier now. "Please, Shinji. I will _never _deliberately make you, or even let you suffer. I can't swear it on my life, not when people are depending on me, but I will swear it on anything you ask. Even a Bible, even if the flesh is seared from these stolen bones. I deserve that pain, if you who I care for has felt this pain, all this time. I never meant to hurt you. I don't want to hurt you, and yet I did."

"I'll have to go to hell eventually," Shinji knew. "The world's going to end."

"'And they will be cast into the wilderness, where there will be a wailing and a gnashing of teeth,'" Tabris said, rolling his eyes. "And they don't realize that 'wilderness' means 'unspoiled land.' A new world. Yes, this world will end someday. But life will go on. I will take care of you, Shinji. I won't let you die. I want to stay with you, and I certainly don't want to live in hell. I spent far too long sealed in the ice, and fire sounds even more unpleasant. I have no intention of allowing this world to end. I like it here, despite the L-people that rule it, and their cruelties. Why would I place you on burning coals when I can lie with you on silken sheets?" he asked, stroking Shinji's barrier again now, and Shinji could see it waver. Felt it waver, felt himself waver. "Why would I want you to look at me with eyes of betrayal and pain, when it's so sweet when you reach for me tentatively, hopefully, wanting my touch? Of course it's possible for me to love you, Shinji. You're worthy of love. You're kind, and helpful, and care about others' pleasure, and…"

"I'm not!" Shinji wailed, covering his ears. The barrier solidified. "I'm not! I only pretended to be those things, to be good, so you wouldn't punish me! I'm a coward and a liar, I'm weak and am I the one who tricked you into falling in love with me? Am I the awful one here? I'm, I'm a horrible person!"

"I wish I'd known that you felt this way... Shinji, you're not the only one here who did what they had to do in order to survive and keep their family alive. To make the pain of hunger stop. Survival is not weak, placing your head into the lion's mouth is not cowardice." Tabris looked at him beseechingly. "I didn't mean to do to you what those others did to them. Shinji, I… I am so sorry. For failing to make this clear to you, for letting you suffer so in my care… I deserve your hate."

"How, how could I possibly hate you?" Shinji asked Tabris, no, asked himself. "I tried so hard not to love you, and I can't help it. You're so kind, so gentle to me, even though I don't deserve it, and I would have done anything for it to be real, I want so much to believe that it's real!" He trembled now, curling up tighter, but he could feel Tabris on his skin, on his soul, that gentle presence. Not strong now, but trembling. Like him.

"What would prove to you that it's real? That I want to protect you, that I want to make you happy, to see you smile, to hold you while you sleep?" the devil, his lover begged him.

"I don't know!" Shinji wailed. "It's not possible! No one would ever love me!"

"I love you," Tabris said, with no hesitation. "I love you, Shinji. It's as absurd for me to love you as it is for a human to love a fallen angel. You're so young compared to me, so very young, and fragile, and I've already broken you, haven't I? I've already hurt you, and I'm afraid I won't be able to keep you from being hurt again. This world, the nature of existence here: you all cause each other such pain, and now I've caused you pain?"

Tabris said that as though it was deeply wrong for him to cause pain to anyone, but wasn't he a devil? Wasn't that what they did?

"I love you, and I want you to be eternally happy, with me," Tabris told him, and Shinji could hear that of this, Tabris was absolutely certain. Or lying through the fangs he'd worn that night when he turned into a white tiger to warm Shinji's feet. "I want to play music with you, for my children. I want to fly with you. I want to walk with you on my arm, so all may watch and envy. I want to share my bed with you, and slip food past your lips, and see all of your smiles. I love you, Shinji. Whatever I can do, whatever it takes, to make you believe me. I want you to believe me, to know that I love you."

Tears fell down Shinji's cheeks, because it was so beautiful and it couldn't be real and he didn't deserve it, but it sounded so wonderful, Tabris' touch felt so good, and he _wanted_.

And he was weak.

The barrier fell, and in an instant Tabris' arms were around him, clasping him tight, wrapping him up in fireside warmth and kisses that tried to bless every inch of his head.

"I love you," Shinji confessed, because he was weak but it was impossible to want to be strong, not when it was his weakness that was letting someone hold him like this. Letting someone give him what he craved. "I love you, I'll do anything for you. I'll let you do anything to me. Just don't stop pretending that you love me, please," he begged.

"Oh, oh dear Shinji, my poor little lamb… I love you," Tabris said, unfurling white wings, heedless of how they scraped the ceiling. "I love you."

Enveloped in warmth, Shinji cried.


	10. Chapter 10

Breakfast was in the glassed-over courtyard with the marble birdbath, Tabris in the black and gold brocade and Shinji in the white and silver dressing gown. The shoes Hikari brought were a little more substantial than the bedroom slippers, because the grass was wet with dew. They fed each other, the way they had that first morning, and Shinji found the courage to ask, "Do you always do that? Have people spend their first night in your bed?"

"With new children?" Tabris asked. "The ones that are defiant, I leave to their fellows, so they can see how much the others like it here, how much better a place this is, and how many opportunities it gives them to strike back at those they hate, in my service." Tabris' smile was perhaps a little evil, but it wasn't directed at Shinji. "Those who are broken, I give to Iruel and my other children, the fallen angels. They can take the time to mend their minds." Tabris himself was busy, although Shinji wasn't entirely sure with what. "Those who are sad and desperate, for themselves and others, I enchant their minds while they sleep, and keep them with me to try to find the cause. Hikari and Touji had younger sisters, and when the only money-earners were kidnapped? They were desperate to get back to those children, so I had mine find them. You, however, I couldn't enchant." Because Shinji's soul was sold, not sacrificed.

"I saw a core of nobility in you, a willingness to sacrifice yourself for those you loved. You deserved kindness, so I gave it to you, and then you were so eager, so affectionate…" Tabris was enchanted himself, but that reminiscent smile was replaced by a frown at himself. Shinji was sad to see it go. "I thought the fact you acted like that even without the enchantments meant that it was how you truly felt, but I forgot that… The enchantments I place upon the incubi are for their protection as well. I should have remembered that leaving your heart untouched meant it was unarmored."

"Touji said you hadn't really let anyone into your bed since Mari left," Shinji said, looking down at the black leather boots on his feet. They seemed sturdy enough, the kind of thing that could survive London's streets, not something for lounging around inside a manor.

"She tackled me," Tabris said fondly. "She was a prostitute for quite some time before one of them hired her and found her burgling his rooms when he woke up. He was angry enough to sacrifice her for something of very little value, but she took to the life of an incubus as eagerly as you seemed to take to being in my bed. She's very full of life, and she saw me as something of a conquest and mostly as a charity case."

"Do you miss her?" Shinji asked, examining the china painted with riots of exotic flowers. This set must be for use only in the gardens: he'd never seen it before.

"She called me 'daddy' in bed." Tabris grimaced. "Incest isn't a taboo for us: all angels were created by the same being, so in a sense they're all brothers and sisters, but I was happy when Asuka became old enough. Mari adores looking after people. The physical act was enjoyable, but she slept with me because I was there, she liked me well enough and no one else was sleeping with me. Who I was didn't come into it. Mari could survive the life she had and still possess the joy she does because something in her is broken. I decided not to fix it, because she's happy the way she is, but Asuka is the first person that Mari has affection for as _Asuka_. You're a little jealous of Mari, and that's because you're worried that I might love her, and not love you as much, but it wouldn't occur to Mari to be jealous. She's not capable of that depth of feeling. The depth of feeling I love you for."

"But I was lying," Shinji said quietly. "You thought I was… because you were special to me, and…"

"And even when you were being hurt because… No, even when I was hurting you, you still came to love me. You don't hate me for it, even though you have every right," the fallen angel said seriously. "You may have sought my favor because of what I was, because I had power over you… In order to survive," he reminded Shinji, seeing him start to rebuke himself for lying. "But you truly did come to love me, just as I thought you did. Not because of who and what I am, but in spite of it. The only one I am disappointed in is myself, Shinji. You were brave, and clever, finding a way to survive when you thought you were among enemies."

Shinji blushed and Tabris smiled affectionately, distracted from his self-recrimination by how adorable he seemed to find Shinji, and pressed another bit of scone to his lips. "It concerns me that you fell in love with me while I was hurting you. Anyone who would hurt you…" It was harder to tell if Tabris' eyes were glowing angrily when they were out here in the bright sunlight. Shinji had seen them glow during the cult meetings, to hint that he was about to become displeased if someone did not correct themselves quickly. "Anyone who would hurt you deserves _many things_," coming from the devil, that meant 'countless tortures,' Shinji knew "but your love is not one of them. You should not love me, Shinji. You deserve someone who succeeds in making you happy. And yet, I have your love, and could never refuse it, so all I can do is attempt to earn it."

But Tabris _had _earned it, by being so gentle, by trying to make Shinji happy. Shinji should have said that, instead of lowering his eyes to the table. Tabris might think that Shinji was doing that because he was still too afraid of displeasing his master to agree with Tabris, actually say that Tabris needed to earn it. He should have said that it wasn't necessary, really, he didn't want Tabris to go to any trouble when going to trouble for Shinji's sake would surely annoy him, and remind him that Shinji didn't deserve any of it, and then he wouldn't be kind anymore.

He didn't say anything, though, because Tabris was already so kind, so gentle. He already made Shinji so happy, so if he was _trying _to make Shinji happy? To spoil him? To prove to Shinji that he was loved?

Would Tabris wrap his wings around him, tell him that he was loved, touch Shinji so gently, ask him again to be certain that the touches felt good, that he wanted to be touched (made him confess his sinful desires, admit that he wanted to touch Tabris and be touched in return)?

He wanted Tabris to keep spoiling him, to keep being so wonderfully gentle and kind. That was really why he'd tried to be good, not some clever plan to survive. He wasn't like Hikari and Touji, he was sure he would have killed himself if his father had turned him out onto the streets to try to survive. He wasn't brave at all, but he didn't want to correct Tabris, not when it made Shinji feel so warm. His father had always regarded him with hatred and disgust: Shinji knew that he didn't deserve the joy he was experiencing now, but he would do anything to hold onto it.

And Tabris did intend to spoil him, to shower him with gifts in the hopes of making him smile. To make up for letting him live in fear. "Israfel are performing today. Would you like to come with me?"

"Come with you?" Shinji echoed. Outside the manor? He realized that instead of being grateful for the increased freedom, for Tabris wanting him to feel like less of a prisoner perhaps, he found the idea a little upsetting. The outside world was cold and cruel. He'd already known that escape wasn't an option: even if he was willing to let his mother die, he didn't have anywhere to go. He realized now that he didn't _want _to leave. That the manor was, was his home, no, his heaven.

"Israfel sings," Tabris explained, smiling at the thought of them. "They're performing at an opera house in London. There's a box reserved for their parents, but their parents are their familiars, so the box is always available for me."

"An opera house? Ritsuko and Kaji were going to make clothes for me to wear outside the manor, but…" Shinji hadn't seen any.

"Since you still hadn't selected a room of your own, they were put in with my spare and seasonal clothing," Tabris said. "Would you like to try some on, after practice? Pick out something for a performance and dinner in the city. It's one of those venues where those in attendance are there to be seen as much as to see, which is why I don't go as often as Israfel would like me to go. I use the name Kaworu Nagisa in town: it's something the Circle set up for me. Would you like to go as my fiancée?"

Fiancée? Not fiancé? Go as a _woman_? But, Shinji realized, they couldn't go out in public as two men. Not when Tabris would want to stay close to Shinji, and kiss his hand. Be affectionate, to prove to Shinji that Tabris loved him. It was strange how much the idea of dressing as a woman didn't bother him, not after more than a week of being naked most of the time. He'd need help dressing, since what little he knew about women's clothing was that it was complicated, but he'd needed help putting on all the layers of cloth for the last ceremony. He was sure Hikari would help.

One of them needed to be a woman, since he didn't want to go an entire evening without any contact with Tabris, even if they wouldn't be able to kiss or do much of anything in public. Asking Tabris to dress in women's clothing, though? Of course not: Tabris was the man in the relationship.

So Shinji nodded, knowing that he was blushing and glad that Tabris considered it cute. He wasn't blushing because of the clothing, just because it was a reminder that Tabris wanted to do things like kiss Shinji's cheeks and accept a bit of buttered toast from Shinji's fingers.

The way he sucked on those fingers for just a few moments before returning them made Shinji very glad they didn't wear normal clothes here. He was a little too worn out from Tabris taking care of him for such a long time this morning, but when he did grow hard, he'd be able to kneel down at Tabris' feet and pull open both their robes.

At first it had tasted strange, but soon the taste and scent became associated with gentle instruction, with words of praise, and afterwards being touched and savored like he was something precious.

If there was _any _possibility, any hope at all, that it was possible to make Tabris love him, then he had to seize that chance. If Tabris liked it when Shinji reached for him, lusted after him, then he would eagerly be a catamite.

* * *

"My hair isn't long enough," was the first problem. Other than that, Shinji had to admit as he looked in the large gilt-edged mirror, taller than he was, that hung on the wall in the dressing room, it would be very easy for him to pass for a woman once he was in a dress.

"I gave you the power to change your shape," Tabris said. "Well, it's dangerous for a human to change their form too freely. You don't understand how your bodies work, so you're liable to leave out something vital. So we give you specific transformations instead. Growing your hair out, growing your ears and tail back if you decide you want to give it another try: those are simple things. Shall I show you how?"

Shinji nodded, and Tabris touched a finger to his forehead. A mental twist, and there were different senses of what his body could be like. That was ears twitching in the wind, those were wings flexing on his back, there the weight of hair on his head, and next to it, more weight on the front of his body. "Would you like me to turn into a woman?" Shinji asked.

"Well," Tabris pointed out, "If you do that now, there's no way we'll be leaving on time."

He was right, Shinji knew: he'd want to experiment, see if it really was true that women could enjoy sex. Mari and Hikari definitely seemed to, and he was sure that Tabris could show him how. Shinji blushed.

He really had become a pervert: thinking of this shouldn't be making him want. No, they really wouldn't be leaving on time if they did this. "You're right," Shinji agreed. "Maybe tomorrow?" Unless Tabris had something else planned for them.

"We'll just have you put on a stuffed bodice," Hikari said, fishing one out of the appropriate box. This was where they stored all the costumes as well as the other clothing that wasn't currently being used. "Let's get you laced into the corset first. It's a good thing one of the other housekeepers wrote out directions. Noble ladies' clothing is really just ridiculous. Oh," she realized. "I'll have to show you where everything like that is." For when Shinji needed it, once he was head of the household after Hikari and Touji became demons.

It took Hikari and Tabris combined to manage the corset, and then more and more bits and pieces were put on Shinji, something like forty, and he found himself thinking with despair of how long it would take to get all of it off.

Tabris hadn't even started getting dressed, and the thought of how much clothing would be on the two of them combined, separating them from each other? How long it would take to get all of it off both of them? A date suddenly felt much less appealing.

Especially once Tabris started brushing his hair and helping Hikari put it up. He loved those hands on his head, in his hair.

* * *

They were able to talk freely in the coach, since the driver was one of Tabris', but eventually they reached the opera house and had to dismount. Shinji tucked his arm into Tabris', or rather Kaworu's, and let him lead. He really didn't know how to make the skirts or anything work, so it was a good thing that some people thought it was cute and feminine to be a bit clumsy.

He really wasn't used to admiring glances, even though he told himself that almost all of them had to be for Tabris, even the men. Why would anyone pay attention to someone as plain as Shinji when he was standing next to someone so radiant?

There was champagne sent to the private box not long after they settled in to the padded seats lined with velvet. Shinji grimaced at the taste. He hadn't liked the taste of beer, the few sips the boys managed to get, but Tabris' wine was addictive, and champagne was supposed to be a good kind of wine, right?

Maybe what he liked about it was Tabris' blood.

"Would you like me to?" Tabris asked, glancing at Shinji's glass, and Shinji nodded. The curtains of their box were still drawn, since the performance hadn't started, so Tabris could let a bit of blood flow into Shinji's glass, then snap his fingers so the liquid became clear again.

Shinji sipped, and oh, yes, that was much better. The wave of warmth sent ripples down his spine, and he felt instantly tipsy. Not tired, or fuzzy, just like the world had the edges taken off, and it was impossible to be self-conscious. When the curtains were drawn, he sat back and leaned against Tabris' shoulder, even though that was certainly inappropriate to do in public and people would think whoever he was had been raised badly, but it wasn't as though he wanted to participate in Society.

"_I want to bury my face in your neck, and breathe in the scent of you,"_ he heard in his head, and even though he knew that was Tabris' voice, he still jumped a bit.

The devil looked at him and smiled, so Shinji sat back down, hoping not that many people had been looking at them. "_Master Tabris?"_

"_Kaworu out here, or Mister Nagisa, if you must_," he heard. "_The two children: they're Israfel."_

"_Like Ramiel?" _Shinji asked, seeing the white-haired boy and girl, but he'd watched and whichever host Ramiel wasn't possessing had black hair. Only the fallen angel's current body had white hair.

"_Israfel has two selves. Cecelia is often unaware that she is Israfel."_ Shinji turned to look at Kaworu, and saw the doting smile. At least it seemed more parental than anything else? "_I'm her kind cousin Kaworu – this identity is a little too young to be an uncle. I've been two generations of Kaworu Nagisa now, although the older one is supposedly still alive. It's the father that has the title. I would appear older in public,_" since this Kaworu looked no older than fifteen, "_but then I would seem to be robbing the cradle, as common as that is._"

Tabris was ancient, and Shinji wasn't that old, but the most wrong thing about their relationship was that they were both men, so the age difference barely registered by comparison. Oh, and Shinji was letting a devil have his way with him. That was also much more inappropriate than a noble taking a young wife.

Shinji finally registered the music. "_Is it safe? For demons to sing a hymn?"_ They weren't going to get hurt would they? What about Tabris, sitting here listening to it?

"_I'm very fond of it_," Tabris responded, glancing at him with a reassuring smile. "Kisses, and wine," he murmured, touching his champagne flute to Shinji's in lieu of a kiss. "Seek him beyond _the starry heavens_." That made him smirk behind his champagne flute, but he didn't explain the joke.

He also didn't point out to Shinji the woman who was staring at them through her opera glasses, not even bothering to hide her scrutiny. Tabris himself had told her that he could feel it when someone was watching him.

Tabris could do without being glared at, but it was good to see that Misato Katsuragi was doing well. So Kaji had managed to find out about the trip and alert her in time? No wonder the man's continued existence annoyed Leliel so much.

* * *

After the performance, they were led backstage, where Cecelia ran up to fling herself on Cousin Kaworu while Makoto followed more sedately, glaring at Shinji. Even pint-sized fallen angels were intimidating to someone who knew what they were.

"And thank you for coming!" Cecelia said, suddenly in front of Shinji and curtseying. "If you hadn't asked to come, I'm sure Cousin Kaworu wouldn't have come, and we love singing for him, don't we, Makoto?"

Makoto nodded, still glaring.

"Shinji plays the cello: when you next come visit my estate, both of us can accompany you," Kaworu told her.

"Really?" she said, clapping her hands with delight.

"Does she have to?" Makoto said.

"Makoto!" Cecelia said, aghast. Tabris gave him a scolding look.

"That's _our _time with him," Makoto said, still frowning. "_You _get to spend almost all day with him, don't you? He's _our _family."

Makoto was jealous, Shinji realized. Jealous of _him_? Another fallen angel thought that Shinji was special to Tabris? He should have been worried, or apologetic, but instead as he looked down at his skirts he just felt happy.

* * *

_Cecelia and Makoto are from Campus Apocalypse, the two halves of the angel Israfel. Since they didn't want to destroy human souls, they possessed hosts in the womb, before they got souls of their own. They're still adorable little kids that sing at the professional level, so Tabris isn't the only angel who is fond of human music in that continuity. Cecelia gets a crush on Shinji after he helps her save the cat she's feeding (which is actually Gaghiel, not that either of them are aware of this). Makoto is both worried and ticked off at Shinji because of this, since Cecelia doesn't remember that Shinji is one of the people trying to hunt her down. _

_I don't think Tabris ever finds out that another of his siblings, or well, half of another of his siblings, also likes Shinji. If only that manga was longer..._


	11. Chapter 11

The half-moon's ceremony was an administrative meeting, which seemed far too boring and ordinary, and yet it was vitally necessary. The cult had rules about who you could brainwash and control, based on not getting caught and not interfering in the doings of the senior members more than anything else. They were often broken, by those feeling entitled to do whatever they wished with their power. Tabris presided, but he'd told Shinji that there was rarely anything for the cupbearer to do.

Except, today…

It didn't hurt, when he parted his flesh under the tip of the knife the way Tabris had shown him and let blood drip into the goblet, mingling with the blood Tabris had already shed. For some reason, letting people see him use magic like that bothered him almost as much as actually cutting himself, so if they thought it was the silver knife that did it, that was better somehow. Especially with so many eyes on him.

Drawing the flat of the silver knife over the wound hid the wound closing itself on his own, and he knelt to present the goblet to Tabris.

The fallen angel drank.

Shinji wondered how it felt for him. Shinji's blood was just blood, not special the way Tabris' was, so there probably wasn't that echoing warmth, that felt a little like having his soul touched, when Tabris had him raise the barrier so he could show Shinji how to control it. Still, at least Tabris _was _a devil, so he should like the taste of blood, right?

He relaxed a little when Tabris hummed, pleased, as he lowered the goblet from his lips, then held it up to Shinji, who drained it to the dregs.

It was important enough to keep people from getting their hands on Tabris' blood when they weren't allowed to have it. When they talked about this, Tabris hated the thought of any of the members of SEELE getting their unworthy hands on _Shinji's _blood. So all of it had to be drunk, even though this was more of Tabris' blood than Shinji had ever drunk in one sitting. The champagne flute was smaller than the grail, even though Tabris had already drank half of it, and he'd just sipped from that all through the performance, not downed it all at once.

Ramiel took the goblet from Shinji to refill it with wine before it could slip through his hands, thankfully, and he managed to only half fall onto the throne, into Tabris' arms.

It felt like his soul was held in those strong arms. It felt like he was loved.

"My dear little lamb." A soft and gentle creature, an innocent one.

"Master Tabris?" Shinji replied, quiet and hopeful. Had Tabris liked it? They'd exchanged blood, like blood brothers. He thought from how Tabris had talked about that it might bond them, even if demons certainly didn't have the sacrament of marriage. Perhaps the idea was to make things go both ways? Shinji liked the idea of a little piece of himself being inside Tabris, just like when the fallen angel swallowed Shinji's seed. He knew that taking someone's seed drained their vitality, like some women who wanted sex so they could get a man's masculine energy. Maybe if Tabris kept draining him dry so often, Shinji would stay a womanly catamite.

He didn't mind that, even though he should, since Master Tabris liked him like this.

"You did well, Shinji," Tabris murmured for him, and Shinji relaxed, still idly thinking about that. Tabris almost always finished inside either Shinji's body or his mouth, while often Shinji spilled himself on his own stomach or the sheets. So Shinji should be getting a lot of masculine energy from that, and that was supposedly one of the reasons that girly boys were selected as upperclassmen's fags: to toughen them up, so they'd eventually become more manly.

Tabris was very virile, so that explained why Shinji had plenty of energy even though he was drained at least three times a day, but Tabris wasn't human, even if he was possessing a body that was originally human. What could so much demonic energy be doing to Shinji's body? He would have to ask Tabris later, but the thought of gradually being milked dry of Shinji, all filled up with Tabris made him twitch where he was pressed up against Tabris. He was pathetic, and it was probably impossible for anyone to like him, but if he was more like Tabris, then he might be worth loving?

It wasn't as though some of the members of the circle weren't having their way with their familiars as they watched the proceedings, out of boredom, exhibitionism and in some cases to show off that they could remain focused even while a slave pleasured them.

If he started to take care of Tabris, the thought of all of them watching Tabris pet his hair and murmur to him, so pleased with him?

But it was Tabris that started to stroke and fondle him first through the fabric, Shinji curling up against Tabris and trying not to cry out, even though it would be tactfully ignored. After Shinji finished, he slid down the lounge chair.

If he pleased his Master, Tabris would be kind to him. Shinji wanted to please him even more now that pleasing him eagerly might make Tabris love him back, too.

* * *

"He called him a lamb."

"He's said before that the boy's soul possesses a rare radiance, superior to that of any other human. Or any human that is _merely _a human?"

"The devil tempted the last messiah with all the kingdoms of the world," Keel said thoughtfully, "but what need would a son of God have for mere temporal power? Yet God is a God of love, and the boy is clearly besotted. A true master of temptation would know their target's nature, and use it against them."

"You're not seriously…" suggesting that those two are _right?_

"The Messiah, selling his soul to the devil?"

"What are we going to do?"

"The Messiah did not awaken as the Messiah until he was thirty," Keel reminded them. "Until that time, he was his earthly father's obedient son. By selling himself, he did his father's will, just like any virtuous child. Perhaps his birth, and to her, no less, is the great plan that Yui was pursuing… It would explain why she picked a name that could be read 'true god.' If so, we did well by removing him from her influence." At least none of them were fool enough to think that Shinji was the Antichrist. Those who had actually read the Bible knew that the Antichrist was not someone who would pose as a virtuous man, a fake Christ, and try to deceive the faithful, but would try to turn man away from God, by claiming that God did not exist and the sinful, secular life was all-important.

The Antichrist would not try to trick man into worshipping the devil, but worshipping nothing. Condemning their souls to first hell and then nonexistence.

"Is a mere woman, your daughter or not, what we should really be concerned with here? The Messiah the world has awaited for almost nineteen hundred years is in Lucifer's clutches!"

"Do you really think God did not foresee this?" Another said disgustedly. "It was God's will that Jesus suffer the devil's temptation, since that is part of human existence and Jesus was the bridge between God and man."

"But Jesus refused the temptation! He did not become an eager…" To attach the description of catamite to even a possible Messiah was too blasphemous even for one of them.

"He was given over to the devil by his own father." Keel's voice was stern. "Just like when a woman is given to another man. It is his duty to submit obediently to Lucifer's desires now, since that is what Gendo Ikari ordered him to do." By bringing him to be sold. "When he awakens, and realizes that his true father is God, he will no longer need to abide by the dictates of Gendo Ikari. Since the man was clearly never his father in the first place." It explained much. That strong a resemblance to Yui? Well, if Yui was the only _human _parent…

"Ah," one of them said, relieved, thinking they followed Keel's thoughts. "Since Gendo Ikari was not Shinji's true father, he had no right to give him away, and there is nothing binding about the current state of sin?"

"Filial piety is a virtue, but also owed to the mother. And if the Messiah were to reclaim his soul, Yui Ikari would return to hell."

One of them snorted. "Mary was not the mother of God, and neither is Yui. God merely placed the child in her womb."

"That is where the Protestants ignore Biblical truth, once again. Even though yes, Mary only bore God's child, the writers of the Bible believed that all woman merely incubated their husband's seed. The relation between Mary and Jesus was the same as the relation between all mothers and sons, therefore Mary was Jesus' mother, and to claim otherwise is claim the text of the Bible is untrue. Jesus showed filial piety to Joseph only until he awakened to his duty as the Messiah, to his true father: he showed filial piety to Mary for his entire life."

"Modern science…"

"Don't modern science me. Claiming that the text of the Bible is invalid because of the say-so of a Catholic monk… You're worse than any Papist."

"Have we forgotten that the Messiah is meant to lead an army against the devil's forces?" An annoyed voice spoke up. "The Messiah is perfectly capable of freeing her soul, or even absolving it of its sins, if he cares to. _That _may have been her back-up plan, if she was unable to obtain God's power herself. Use the Messiah's virtue and filial piety to obtain forgiveness for her transgressions and entrance into the City of God."

"Should we attempt to earn the Messiah's favor for ourselves?"

"If possible, but Tabris keeps the boy closely guarded."

"Surely we can at least obtain a private interview with him. This is the most likely candidate we have ever had: surely an angel who has stood in God's presence would recognize the soul of the true Messiah."

"Unless the intent is to trick us."

"Why should he trick us? He thinks we are merely out for personal power: he has no idea our true goal is to find the Messiah and bring about the end of the world and rise of the City of God. But power was not enough to tempt the Messiah, nor was torture enough to deter him. This time, the devil has found him before he awakened as the Messiah. What if his goal is to keep the boy from awakening, cozen him with promises of love and earthly delights?"

"Is that possible?"

"God would not let that be the outcome," Keel said, because they must have faith in God. Yet, wasn't their entire goal to hurry along God's work? "We must still obtain the boy and find some way to test him."

* * *

Finally reaching the end of the song, Shinji stopped, then jerked his head up when he heard clapping. "Oh, hello, Mister Kaji." When had he come in?

"I heard you playing. You're getting pretty good," Kaji said, coming over and clapping Shinji on the shoulder.

"Thank you," Shinji said, blushing a little and glad that he wore clothing while he was practicing, even if it was just a robe. Kaji was always fully clothed, and while the incubi didn't seem to care, Shinji felt really self-conscious when someone else was wearing clothing and he wasn't. Touji said that it was the difference between nude and naked: nude was for beautiful women and statues of ancient athletes, people confident enough and fearless enough. Naked was vulnerable, and Kaji was nice to him. More than that, Kaji complimented him.

Kensuke was nice, but Kensuke hadn't complimented him. Kensuke hadn't looked him up and down with approval and sometimes a 'go get 'em, tiger,' whistle. Kaji flattered him, and the only person to do that was Tabris.

Kaji certainly never acted inappropriately, but Shinji wasn't used to being admired, and Kaji was certainly very handsome, and thinking of the size of Mister Kaji's hands, of that large body over his, made him feel even more depraved than just being a catamite at all. He belonged to Tabris, and Tabris maybe even loved him, and it was one thing to have those thoughts when he thought Master Tabris was just trying to tempt him into debauchery, and sleeping with another man would certainly be debauchery, but now? Now that there might be something unique between them? Shinji felt terrible about betraying Master Tabris, even in his thoughts.

He still didn't _think _that Tabris would mind, but… "Oh, sorry, what?" he had to say.

"Would you mind getting dressed and heading over to the delivery entrance with me? The Master ordered a bunch of new dresses for you, and Ritsuko ordered samples of a lot of materials. They arrived just now."

"Oh," Shinji said. "Alright." At first, he'd wondered why Kaji would possibly want him to get dressed, but the delivery entrance had outsiders coming in at all sorts of times with all the things it took to run a household. Hikari had introduced him to most of the regulars, like the milkman, but the cultists would send gifts for the attention of Master Tabris and so would the fallen angels, all sorts of strange and elaborate things that often arrived at inconvenient times so people had to put clothes on in a hurry to get them into the house.

Before, he'd used the clothes that were kept in the antechamber, but now there was some of his clothing in the walk-in wardrobe attached to Master Tabris' rooms.

Kaji laughed in a way that sounded a bit startled when Shinji closed the door before Kaji could follow him into Master Tabris bedroom, where Shinji intended to change. "Oh, right, modesty," Kaji said after a bit. "Let me know when you're done."

"I'll be done soon, I'm not putting on anything that complicated," Shinji said, already slipping his foot into one leg of the trousers. Oh, right, "Is it okay to be dressed like an errand boy?" he remembered to ask.

"Can't see why not," Kaji said. "I just want to get a look at your skin and some of these in the sunlight, for the walking costumes. Windows and that greenhouse roof aren't the same. I think there's some magic on 'em that filters out the London fog."

Shinji nodded cheerfully, even though Kaji couldn't see him.

When they got down to the entryway, Shinji started to head towards the carriage.

Then Kaji hit him on the back of the head with what was probably a blackjack.

Shinji wasn't knocked out, thanks to the power of protection Tabris gave him, but he still felt that Kaji had _tried _to hit him, and that startled him enough that he froze and Kaji was able to throw him over a shoulder, throw himself into the carriage and yell cheerfully up to the driver for him to take off.

He just sort of hung there, closing his eyes so Kaji would think he was unconscious when Kaji put him down on the opposite seats, since he was very, very confused. This couldn't be another surprise from Tabris: Tabris would have known something like that wouldn't work on Shinji. Shinji didn't think Tabris would want him to be scared by even a pretend kidnapping, either.

Wait, was that what this was, Shinji realized as the carriage jolted around, hurrying over the cobblestones. A kidnapping? He was seriously being kidnapped?!

"You're awake?" Kaji asked him, sounding mildly surprised but not all that worried. Still sounding friendly, too.

Lying there on the leather seat, Shinji debated trying to play dead, but the way he froze up when he realized Kaji knew he was awake would have given it away if it hadn't already been obvious to Kaji for some other reason. He glanced up at Kaji with worried eyes.

"I'm not going to bite your head off," Kaji told him. "This is a rescue."

"A rescue?" What? Shinji started to push himself up into a sitting position.

"A friend of mine – Well, a lot of people wanted to meet you," Kaji explained. "But she's the only one who might have your best interests at heart. You may have fooled the incubi, but that's just because they couldn't imagine someone not wanting Tabris to sleep with them. And I mean literally. They can't. They're all under mind control magic, since the cult wanted incubi to have their way with, the fallen angels are all too good to pretend to be servants to us mere humans and even though Tabris despises humans in general, he has a soft spot for kids even when they aren't his. So the incubi and their minds are all wrapped up in spells so it's just not possible to hurt them during sex. If you whip them, it'll just feel good, they'll heal injuries like that," Kaji snapped his fingers, "so the Circle couldn't mark them and shame? What's shame?

"Eventually the sadistic bastards had to figure it out, that if they wanted to hurt and humiliate some poor kid they'd have to grab one off the street like everyone else. Then sacrifice them when they're used up, too dead to care what else is done to them. The ones who were hurt that way before, they're _really _grateful Tabris took all of that away from them. They all adore him for it. So they couldn't see that you were scared, that you were letting him do things to you that you weren't comfortable with since you thought otherwise, things would get even worse. Because that would have reminded them of the hell they used to go through, and Tabris isn't letting them suffer that anymore."

Eyes wide, Shinji stared at him, because someone had seen? Someone had cared? Even Kensuke hadn't thought there was anything wrong with Shinji or his situation.

Because he couldn't. Because he was Mistress Iruel's knight, and he'd do anything for the honor of being taken to her bed. He'd sighed over how lucky Shinji was. He hadn't realized that there was anything wrong about being a catamite. Hadn't been able to see anything else, when the absolute importance of serving the fallen angels got in the way.

"Thinking about your friend, aren't you?" Kaji asked him. "Yeah. That's the difference between those of us who have sold ourselves, and the poor bastards offered up as human sacrifices. And the poor saps who go to work at the wrong factory. Or maybe the right one. They'll live a lot longer, and healthier, and they'd say that they're happier, but I don't know if you'd call it living. Would you?" he asked Shinji, leaning back and reaching into his jacket pocket for a cigar.

Shinji looked down at his folded hands as Kaji lit up. "It terrified me. No, that wasn't really terrifying, I was already terrified, being in the clutches of a demon, so it was just one more thing that was strange and scared me. But… Tabris is really kind, and if he made Hikari and Touji and everyone else that way in order to protect them…" That was something Tabris would do. "He didn't know that I was scared and wasn't doing it because I enjoyed it." Shinji didn't want to tell Kaji that he'd enjoyed it, oh yes, he had every time, and that had scared him even more, how he started to want to be in Master Tabris' bed, and not just in the hope of relative safety. "When he found out, he took me out on the town," where people could see, "and… He's tried very hard to make me feel loved."

"Make you," Kaji pointed out. "Shinji, I know you know that he's a demon, but he's a fallen angel. He wasn't ever human. Angels are about as different from us humans as we are from monkeys. Tabris keeps his mouth shut, but a lot of the time it's clear he lets various people pull their bullshit since he just doesn't think they're capable of anything any better. Some of the others don't even bother to hide it. We're subhuman to them, Shinji. Property. They're civilized people in among the Africans, or Indians, either kind, or Chinamen swarming the opium traders." Buying their own destruction, their own slavery, while the demons profited.

"The sacrifices are humans selling them other humans to use as slaves, just like it was Africans that captured and sold other African people to the slaving ships. Tabris is the nicest of them, but just because he's pretty… well, maternal." Fathers were strict, had to be unkind to their children. No one with _paternal _instincts would take care of the incubi the way Tabris did, although Kaji hoped Shinji wasn't too offended on his Master's behalf by Kaji insulting him by comparing him to a woman. "They're still pets, cats and loyal dogs. Substitutes for children, not _real _children that grow up to be adults and stop being property someday, at least the boys. Up until last week, I would have said he was probably fairly fond of you, since he wouldn't have bothered to pretend to be if he wasn't. No reason to put in the effort for a mere human. Then the higher-ups in the Circle, and your parents… they all think you need to get away from him. It can't be just for your sake: those bastards aren't going to care about what happens to a kid, but… I'm taking you to see a friend of mine who can tell you a little more about Tabris."

Shinji hesitated.

He didn't want to hear anything more about Tabris. He wanted to let himself believe that he was loved, so he could have even a little happiness before it (maybe, not certainly) turned out to be a lie.

The carriage was already buried in the London fog, and he'd already had Kaji tell him something that he already knew was true, as hard as he'd tried to ignore it, so… Was it better to know, or not to know? He could probably escape from Kaji, if he used the demonic power Tabris had given him, but he didn't know the way home.

He was a coward, so he just stayed quiet as the carriage rattled on to its destination. Kaji took his silence for assent, and stared out into the fog, the smoke from his cigar bringing it into the carriage with them, burying everything in that murky, poisonous grey.

* * *

_No, the bit about sex with women draining masculine energy, meaning that women who actually consented to sex were basically vampires out to become more mannish by… Well, it's not just a reference to what the mythological Lilim got up to. I'd say 'you can't make this crap up' except someone obviously did. Penis envy: the only reason that women could possibly want sex. Ah, Victorians. _

_Then there's the idea that women were nothing but incubators of the miniature humans in sperm (meaning that the only real parent and only person who deserved filial piety/to own their children was the man), vs. Mendelian genetics, the discovery that living things inherit traits from _both _parents. Which should have been obvious since children resemble their mothers, but this wasn't long after someone had to invent a special swan-neck flask to prove that living things didn't just appear out of thin air on a regular basis._

_As for the opium trade… there's a reason the British stopped buying and selling black slaves: they could make more money enslaving yellow people by dealing drugs. The relationship between England, the slave trade and the transition from it to the opium trade is good to look into if you want to lose your faith in humanity. The British Empire: the very definition of disgusting people._


	12. Chapter 12

They were led into a lady's parlor, but a proper lady wouldn't have had that substantial a liquor cabinet on full display, not to mention the mountain of beer bottles that should have been cleared away by her lady's maid.

"Shinji," Kaji said, making introductions, "this is Misato Katsuragi. Misato, this is-"

"Shinji Ikari," she interrupted him, which left Shinji feeling taken aback. The light in her eyes was just as hard as that in Ritsuko's. Even though she was a woman, she seemed as tough as nails. "Grandson of that bastard Lorenz Keel." She waved at the loveseat opposite her large, stuffed leather chair. "Sit down, the both of you."

Shinji obeyed.

"So, you're his catamite," she said, picking the cigarette held in its long holder that was on the table next to her chair and giving it a puff. "I saw you with _him _at the opera house. So he's got you wearing a dress." Not, it was clear, that she thought it made much of a difference, that Shinji was any kind of a man.

"Kaji said you knew things about him." That was what was important to Shinji. He knew he was a disgrace to his family, not any kind of a proper young man, even before he'd sold himself to Tabris.

"Of course I do. I'm… Or have you even heard of the Katsuragi Expedition?"

Shinji shook his head.

Her hand toyed with the cigarette holder as she spoke. "My father was a defrocked Catholic Priest. He was interested in the North and South poles for theological reasons: everyone knows that Hell is 'under' us, but with the Ptolomaic model of the universe disproven, that cast a lot of Biblical interpretations into doubt. Dante depicted hell as not just the lava, sulfur and brimstone that comes out of volcanoes, but a range of climates ending in ice: since maps are depicted with north as up, since that's the direction lodestones are drawn to, there was a theory that north was closer to heaven, which would make south, and the people who live there, closer to hell. Because of that, he spent his life studying the Arctic and Antarctic: mostly the Arctic, since it was easier to get there. Then he got funding for an expedition to the south pole, only it turned out when he'd gone too far to turn back that the funding _really _came from a group of Occultists, who found a hidden set of prophecies from Biblical times. They needed a defrocked priest since there are a lot of Satanic rituals that require a defrocked priest. And they thought they'd found a clue to where exactly Lucifer landed when he fell."

"They freed him." Shinji could put together that much. "So he'd be grateful and so they could sell him their souls, drink his blood and get power."

Misato blinked. "Drink his blood?"

"It gives humans power," Shinji explained. "That's why I have to guard the grail during the ceremonies. They know that they'd be punished by the rest of the Circle if they stole it, but they might think that whatever power they got out of it would be worth it."

"Looks like I should have gulped," Kaji muttered. He hadn't sat, but instead was standing back against a wall, keeping an eye on the door. There was no window, probably for safety's sake.

"So, they found him?" Shinji prompted her.

"They used fire to help them clear out a space around him, and tools heated in the fire to chip away at the ice. When he was almost free, they told us that they were going to use me as a human sacrifice, but my father begged for them to wait until the devil was free and could say what he wanted, that he might be annoyed if I was killed in front of his eyes before he was freed. That he hadn't gotten to do worse to me, or get my soul first. Since he was the one who convinced them not to offer the best sacrifice they had, they had him be the one to start stripping off the last of the ice, so that the devil would kill _him_ if it woke up annoyed. They had me tied to the altar with a knife at my throat as he worked, and they were chanting, so that if he did kill my father they could kill me to show him honor and hope he wouldn't kill the rest of them."

"What did he look like?" Shinji asked her. "In the ice."

"A giant," she told him, eyes distant. "Mostly featureless white flesh, like the whole thing was one huge scar. I guess even angels get frostbite after that long. No wings: it looks like the stories about Michael tearing them off so the fallen angels couldn't get back into heaven were true." She gave him a look. "So you know that's not his body? Did you already know whose it was?"

Shinji shook his head, hoping to forestall her anger with him. "He said that the fallen angels needed human hosts, so I wondered what his real body looked like."

"The way he looks now probably is pretty close to the way he looked before he fell, except for the red eyes," she told him. "I can definitely tell you that he doesn't look a thing like my father did."

"Your father?"

A hand went to the cross necklace she wore. "My father. When he finally touched that cursed flesh, he froze. He stood there, and then his body started to glow white, the color of that devil, and _change._ They panicked and started to chant louder and lower the knife. _I _panicked, I was screaming, but then he, _it_, turned and hit all of the men around me away with a wall of light. I heard a voice that wasn't my father's, not anymore, tell them that 'This man has sold his soul to Me in exchange for his daughter's safety. Any who harm her will answer to me.'"

That, that sounded like Tabris to Shinji. It was a relief. Even if Misato must have been upset, she was still alive, right?

"They let me up eventually, cut my bonds after asking his Majesty's," her voice was mocking, "permission to go near me with a knife. When I could finally look around," she continued, "I saw this youth, looking maybe just slightly older than you, sitting on one of the pieces of ice they'd taken off the cliff, trying to get on it. Just right on the snow and ice, not even noticing the cold. He was so pale, like alabaster, and he had wings that were curled around him a little, but not for modesty or even to block the wind. Just to make a pretty picture, he was aware of how beautiful he looked, the bastard."

Cursing? A woman, cursing? It made Shinji blush at her, but Misato was looking at the bottle of beer on her table, not at him. "Those red eyes, they were laughing at them. A hawk, prepared to swoop down on prey, except they'd already fed it. My father gave me his cross: maybe, if he hadn't, Lucifer would have taken the next person to touch it, taken someone else. Some of them thought they could talk down to him, intimidate him with crosses and holy water: he vaporized their talismans before they could get them close enough to him, and gave their bodies to other fallen angels. They wouldn't have tried it without discussing it with Keel in advance, I'm sure of it, but he and his faction just watched, let others take the risk, like my father… Keel bargained with him for youth and power before they even let me up: the numbers of the inner circle are the numbers they swore themselves in, or maybe the order they were allowed to swear themselves. He answered to Lucifer at first, but then he said that was a title, not a name, and he'd lost the right to Helel, so they were to call him Tabris."

Even though she kept her composure, there seemed to be an element of rambling in that, the words spilling out of her, and it reminded Shinji that she had been drinking before they arrived. He glanced at Kaji, and maybe beneath his poker face there was a hint of concern for her. As well as sadness, that Misato had to be there for something like that, that she'd lost her father.

"He'd glance at me sometimes, to make sure that I was still intact, that he could keep my father's soul, all the way back to England. When we got here, Keel had me put in an insane asylum. I don't know what happened to my mother, even now," she said. "I've tried to warn people, but by the time I was freed, the cult had too much power. No wanted to listen, but the younger ones have gotten more and more blatant over the years, and thankfully Kaji listened to me, and after he infiltrated the cult and got a little power his bosses would listen to him."

Kaji snapped his fingers and fire bloomed. "I can control machinery, too," he told them. "I'm the London Times' lucky charm: amazing what you can get away with, when the presses'll just up and start working again when you enter the room."

"And he can keep guns from working."

"And that," he agreed. "When I'm not hanging out at various places collecting gossip for my own purposes or the society pages, I'm a rather good bodyguard."

A glance at Misato, though, and Shinji wondered if Kaji was digging for praise or this was the woman he'd prefer to be guarding.

"Thank you for telling me all of this, Miss Misato," Shinji said, to be polite. "But _why _are you telling me this?"

"Because he took you out to the opera, and he made you his familiar. He hasn't allowed anyone but another fallen angel to touch the holy grail since one of them found it for him, except when they drink his blood from it, the way the apostles drank the wine that was Jesus' blood." Profaning such a sacred relic… "You're near him all the time, and he can't control your mind, not like the sacrifices he turned into incubi, and you're a human, not another fallen angel," Misato told him. "It's your duty to England, no, to all of humanity, to help us find some way to send him back where he came from!"

Shinji blinked, puzzled. "To Heav-"

"No! All the way to Hell, this time." Instead of stopping in the Antarctic ice. "We have to cast him out of our world, before unleashing this many demons starts to bring about Armageddon! The last time demons and misbegotten creatures roamed freely, God sent a flood! This time, _everyone _will die, and only the Elect will be chosen to go to heaven! Everyone else who has ever lived will end up in Hell, in that _thing's _clutches! Just like my father! You have to swear, now, that you'll find some way to exorcise that devil! If we can destroy his original body and take the one he's stolen away from him, then there'll be nothing anchoring him in the human world, _our _world! He'll have to go where he _should _have gone when God cast him out!"

Shinji quailed back, and that was when the ladies' maid came in to say, "Miss Katsuragi, someone is here to see you."

Misato's firm gaze instantly left Shinji's eyes, both her and Kaji turning towards the maid. Shinji saw Kaji's hand reaching inside his jacket. "I left orders not to be disturbed," Misato snapped, but there was no 'what is the meaning of this?' in it. No, she was afraid she had a very good idea of what the meaning was.

The woman's eyes went blank and she moved to the side. As Tabris stepped into the room, Shinji saw the end of the wave of his hand that had sent her out of his way. Shinji might have expected him to say something like 'You have something of mine,' but instead he ignored Misato and Kaji. "Shinji?" he asked.

Shinji was very relieved that Tabris didn't seem to be angry at all. There was a bit of concern there, but no real worry.

That was right, he'd said that he'd bring Shinji back if he died, right? And he'd given Shinji powers to protect himself with. They couldn't torture him if they couldn't break through the barrier, so as long as Shinji was alive, Tabris was probably sure he wasn't in too much danger. "I hope I didn't worry you," was what he said.

Tabris' eyes laughed. "Did you want me to come riding to the rescue?" he asked, teasing but far from unkind, as though he certainly wouldn't dislike it if Shinji had such a fantasy.

"I didn't want you to go to any trouble!" Shinji protested, springing to his feet. "I just wanted to… Kaji asked me to come with him," he said, leaving out the entire kidnapping part. He didn't want Kaji to get in trouble.

Tabris held up his hand before Shinji could say anything about hoping he'd be back before Tabris noticed he was gone and started worrying and said, "Your father wanted you to have that necklace." His voice was stern. He didn't look at Misato. "If you throw it at me, it will no longer be yours, and _you _will be the reason his gift to you of protection was destroyed."

A moment, and a moment more, and both Tabris and Misato lowered their hands, although her fist stayed clenched tight around the cross.

"I've said before that it won't work. Have you not heard that Lucifer is your god's creation, the most powerful of his creations? The power I possess is akin to God's, and a little symbol like that, which has never belonged to anyone of any real faith? Holding that up to me is threatening the sun with a match. It may not be a relic of faith, but it's a relic of other's feelings. Don't throw away the feelings of someone who traded their life for yours." Then Tabris stopped radiating that stern air, hid the iron hand in that soft velvet glove, and stepped forward to stroke Shinji's face with a glove of kid leather. "Did you have a good afternoon?"

"Please don't be upset with them," Shinji said, looking as pitiful as he could while he leaned into the touch. "I could have said no to Kaji. I just wanted to know more about you."

"There are things I won't tell you, and things I can't," Tabris, or was it Kaworu when he was in the clothing of a gentleman instead of the raiment of the Prince of Hell, admitted apologetically, "but these two don't know as much as they think they do."

Shinji didn't need to turn to look to know that Misato was giving him a death glare.

"Since we're already in London, would you like to go somewhere?" Tabris asked him. "Perhaps a tour of some of the museums?"

Shinji nodded, willing to agree to anything that got them out of this flat without anyone getting hurt.

"As long as you're alright."

"I am alright," Shinji promised him, relieved. "They didn't try to hurt me or attack me or…"

"Shinji, while it's admirable of you to want to protect a friend and someone else you just met, one of my titles _is _Prince of Lies. I know when someone is lying to my face."

And Kaji had hit Shinji over the back of the head, which definitely qualified as an attack. Shinji paled. "Sorry."

"Why should you apologize for having a kind heart?" Tabris asked him. "If I found a four-leaved clover, should I expect my lucky find to apologize for being different? Well, perhaps that is the way of humanity."

"Don't act so superior," Misato said fiercely.

"I will stop acting superior when you humans stop being inferior," Tabris said, amused. "With a few exceptions."

"Acting like this, when you're just a parasite… Free my father!" she demanded.

"He wouldn't let me undo our bargain," he told her. "His body, for your life. Do you have so little concept of what it is to be loved? As for freeing him," now he laughed. "No one in this world is free. With your father dead, you have more freedom than most women, but you're still a _subject_. And if you married," a glance at Kaji, "you would lose what freedom you have. All you humans enslave each other, so that is clearly the way of your world. When in Rome, why should I be any different? Shinji was his father's property, and now he is mine, and am I not a kinder master?" he asked the young man who was so content to stand there and be touched by a devil. "I've done nothing but treat you humans more kindly than you treat each other."

Misato grabbed a bottle of wine, and now Shinji felt the press of what could only be Tabris' power, his soul, heavy in the air. She dropped, and Kaji ran to catch her. The bottle of wine dropped from her limp hand, but not fast enough to break on the heavy plush carpeting of the floor.

Kaji looked up at Tabris. Tabris' eyebrows rose, looking surprised and mildly curious: Shinji turned back to Kaji in time to see a rueful smile on Kaji's face.

Tabris turned back to Shinji. "She's fine. Merely asleep. I couldn't have her burn her own father's body alive with sacramental wine. Shall we go?"

"Um," would they let him into the museum like this? A lower-class boy Shinji's age: people would wonder why on earth one of the gentry was being friendly towards such a person, and they'd be tailed by security the entire time, waiting for him to put his filthy hands on something.

"There's a change of clothes in the coach," he was told, so he followed Tabris out with one glance cast back at Kaji, who was laying Misato out on the loveseat.


End file.
